THESUICIDE OFEUROPE

BOOKS BY PRINCE MICHEL STURDZA

The Suicide of EuropeLa Roumaine Peut-elle Combattre sur Deux Fronts?

Avec 1'Armee RoumaineCrise Econimique et Reforme Monetaire

Czecho-Soviet Protectorate or Independent Rumanian Kingdom?La Bete sans Nom

Katanga : El Occidente al Servicio del CommunismoOpen Letter to Their Excellencies

World Government and International AssassinationAnd You Tomorrow (To be published)

Introduction to a Parabiology (To be published)

THESUICIDE OFEUROPE

MEMOIRS OF PRINCE MICHEL STURDZA,

FORMER FOREIGN MINISTER OF RUMANIA

WESTERN ISLANDS

PUBLISHERSBOSTON

LON ANGELES

COPYRIGHT © 1968 BY MICHEL STURDZAALL RIGHTS RESERVEDWESTERN ISLANDS395 CONCORD AVENUEBELMONT, MASSACHUSETTS 02178

Direct quotations taken from the following sources have been reprintedin this book with written permission of the respective publishers :

F . J . P . Veale, Advance to Barbarism (C . C . Nelson Publishing Company,Appleton, Wisconsin, © 1953)

Hans Rogger and Eugene Weber, eds., The European Right, a HistoricalProfile (University of California Press, Berkeley, © 1965)

Winston Churchill, The Hinge of Fate (Houghton Mifflin Company, NewYork, © 1950)

Winston Churchill, Triumph and Tragedy (Houghton Mifflin Company,New York, © 1953)

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER : 68-58294PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

"Whether you like it or not, history is onour side. We will bury you ."

NIKITA KHRUSHCHEVMoscow, November 16, 1956

Table of Contents

Introduction ixAnalytical Chronology xxxi

PART ONE

vii

PRELUDEI The Past in Us 3

II Early Posts and World War I 12III The Beast and Its Friends 17IV The European Right and Professor Weber's Special

Assignment 25

V

PART TWOTITULESCU, THE ENEMY'S AGENT

Riga and the Pacts of Nonaggression 45VI Titulescu to the Rescue 52VII A Strange Railway Agreement 58VIII The Murder in Marseilles and the Purloined Telegram . . 64

IX

PART THREEKING CAROL THE MURDERER

Titulescu and the Military Alliances with SovietRussia 81

X Prelude to War 90XI Heroes, Scoundrels, and Fools 100XII From Palm Sunday to Crucifixion 108XIII Visit to London and Codreanu's Assassination-

The Two Grynszpans 116XIV Codreanu's Suppression and Hitler's Policy 121XV The Phony Guarantees 127XVI The First Betrayal of Poland 134

viii / Contents

XVII Danger of Peace-Massacre of the Legionaries145XVIII The Panicky Tyrant 150XIX The Arbitration of Vienna and the Legionary

Movement 157

PART FOURANTONESCU, THE INSANE LEADER

XX A Tortured Man 167XXI Bloodshed in Transylvania, Visit to Rome-

The Two Forums 175XXII Visit to Berlin-Four Are Three183XXIII Treason by Misinformation-Past and Present188XXIV More About Truth and Directed Information196XXV Another Night in Jilava200XXVI How We Parted 207XXVII Antonescu's Putsch 211XXVIII Fooled Again 217XXIX Too Late, Gentlemen! 225

PART FIVEMICHAEL: THE PUPPET KING

XXX Falsehood, The Scoundrels' WeaponXXXI Roving in Foreign PartsXXXII The Betrayed ArmyXXXIII Posthumous TriumphXXXIV When Only Honor Could Still Be SavedXXXV Hungarian IntermezzoXXXVI The End and After

231239244250256265268

Post Scriptum 279Appendix

Diplomatic Papers of the United States andRumania's Capitulation

289A Selected Bibliography 301Index of Persons 305General Index 325

Introduction

But who dares call the child by its right name?The few who knowing something about itWere foolish enough not to guard it in their hearts,Those who have shown the people their feeling and their thoughtsHave been since always crucified or burned at the stake .

GOETHE-Faust I

This book is not a history of Europe nor of Rumania nor even of theLegion of the Archangel Michael, but rather the memoirs of oneman who has been a witness and a participant in the events which,for hundreds of millions of people, have turned a century so full ofpromise into an eternity of suffering and slavery . From the first daysof the Russian Revolution, this man understood the terrible dangerwhich the Soviet regime represented not only for his own countrybut also for Europe and the entire world . From that time, his politicalthinking and activities were unswervingly directed by a growing con-sciousness of this danger and by the necessity, to which circumstancesmade him particularly obligated, to inform or to fight those in hisnation who were, or pretended to be, blind to the magnitude and theimminence of this peril .

Prince Michel Sturdza, a former Foreign Minister of Rumania,served in the diplomatic corps of his country for twenty-five yearswithout any interruption other than for his tour of duty during WorldWar I, in which he fought first in a squadron of mounted artillery andthen as chief of an armored car section, and for a period of service asprefect in Transylvania. During his career, he held posts in Durazzo(Albania), Athens, Bern, Budapest, Vienna, Washington (as Councillorand then Charge d'Affaires of the Rumanian Legation) ; he acted asEnvoy Extraordinary and as Minister Plenipotentiary in Riga, Reval,Helsinki, and Copenhagen . His time abroad was interrupted severaltimes by periods of service in the Foreign Office in Bucharest .

As a result of violent conflict with King Carol II and his Govern-ment, concerning Rumania's internal and foreign policy, Prince Sturdzawas forced to leave the diplomatic service for a short time after the

ix

x / Introduction

outbreak of World War II. In 1940 he was appointed as Foreign Min-ister in the first cabinet following the abdication of King Carol . In1945 he belonged, again as Foreign Minister, to the Rumanian Govern-ment in Exile, which refused to recognize the capitulation of KingMichael to Soviet Russia. Since that time he has continued his fightagainst the irreconcilable enemy of his motherland and of WesternCivilization .These memoirs center around three basic dramas, all of them inter-

related and all, for the most part, unknown to the Western reader :the role of pacts of military alliance between France, Czecho-Slovakiaand Soviet Russia in bringing on World War II, the attempts ofGermany to avoid a Western war, and the story of the Legion of theArchangel Michael . Prince Sturdza maintains that Rumania was thepivotal point in the events leading to the war . So because Rumaniaplays such an important part in this book, it is wise to briefly reviewher history .

The reader should remember that the Rumanians do not considertheir nation a Balkan country, but rather a Danubian state, likeAustria and Hungary, and with roots deep in Western Civilization .The Rumanians are not Slavs; historically, and in a large part ethni-cally, the Rumanian people are the heirs of the Dacians . The ancientkingdom of Dacia covered and went beyond the area of the Rumania of1939; its population, which was an offshoot of the Thracian race,appears to have developed its own particular characteristics from yearsof isolation in the valleys of Transylvania whence settlers and warriorsspread east to the Dniester and west to the vicinity of what is nowVienna, covering the area which was to become Dacia .

The Dacian villages (davae, meaning a confederation of villages,may be the origin of Dacia) were forged into a real power and an actualempire under the kingship of Burebista . This expansion, combinedwith her geographical position, soon brought Dacia into conflict withRome. After years of war and hostilities, the Dacians, led by Decebalus,were defeated in 105 A.D. by the Roman Emperor Trajan . The Dacianprisoners sculptured on the column raised by Trajan to commemoratehis victory are, in their physical type, their clothes, and their foot-wear,identical with the Rumanian peasants of the present century. Defeatbrought Roman garrisons, Roman colonists, and the Latin language ;this occupation went deep enough in its penetration of Dacia to resultin Latin becoming the basic element in what has developed into theRumanian language.With the withdrawal of the Roman legions in 271 A .D . by the

Emperor Aurelian, Rumania was left undefended and open to all

Introduction / xiattacks . Wave after wave of barbarians passed through the country .All trace of colonial rule would have been obliterated, as happened inBulgaria, except that the wealth of the country was not great enough orconcentrated enough to encourage the marauders to settle down, and,secondly, the inhabitants withdrew into the mountain valleys, par-ticularly those of Transylvania. We do not know when this migrationto shelter began, how long it lasted, or at what cost it was undertaken .But late in the Thirteenth Century the process was reversed as a partof the Rumanian nobility, with their followers, left Transylvania andmigrated eastward to found what were to become the principalities ofMoldavia and Walachia. These two separate states were formed by themerger of the Rumanians from Transylvania with indigenous Ruman-ian settlements .

From the very beginning, the Walachians under the Bassarab dynastyand the Moldavians under the Mushats had to struggle constantlyagainst attempted encroachments by their neighbors. Hungary hadalready occupied much of Transylvania, and continually strove to con-quer more and more Rumanian territory . The Tartars raided, and evenlaunched full scale invasions against, the principalities until the veryend of the Sixteenth Century . Poland maintained pretensions overnorthern Moldavia. And finally towards the end of the FourteenthCentury, the Turks began their raids which would steadily grow in sizeand ferocity. Thus the Rumanians were perpetually at war, often withboth Christians and Moslems at the same time.

The independence of Walachia was originally secured by the victoryof Ivanco (?-1330) over King Charles Robert of Hungary ; the Walach-ian position was strengthened by Vladislav Bassarab's (1360-1374)defeat of an attack by Charles Robert's son, King Louis the Great .Mircea the Old (1386-1418) of Walachia was present with his lightcavalry at the battle of Nicopolis in 1396. He urged the French andGerman leaders of this Western Crusade against the Turks to let himstrike the first blow. But the heavily armored crusaders insisted on thehonor of making the first charge, the charge failed, and their armywas lost. Mircea pulled his troops back over the Danube ; the Sultanpursued and the two armies joined in combat at Rovine, where the\1Talachians cut the Turks to pieces and forced them across the Danube,which the Turks did not recross for half a century .However the Turks were checked only temporarily. For in the face

of the swelling wave of Moslem power, the hostilities among the Chris-tian princes continued to rage, a tragic prefiguration of the situation inEurope before and during World War II. Towards the end of theFifteenth Century, the two principalities were pressed on all sides, bythe Hungarians, the Poles, the Tartars, and the Turks. Walachia was

xii / Introductiondefended by Vlad the Impaler (1455-1462 and 1476-1477) ; Moldavia,by Stefan the Great (1457-1504) . Vlad earned his nickname from theparticular manner in which he dealt with Turkish prisoners . He suc-cessfully repelled the Turks, but fell in battle with Matthias Corvinus,King of Hungary and the son of a Walachian nobleman. Stefandevoted his whole reign to an attempt to rally the West against theTurkish threat . He inflicted a crushing defeat upon the Turks in 1475at Rahova, and he repelled them at Skeia in 1476 . However neitherHungary nor Poland would give him the solid support needed for anattack on the Ottoman Empire. In fact he was forced into war witheach country and defeated each army in turn . On his deathbed, believ-ing it hopeless to obtain united action from Christendom, Stefanadvised his son to come to an understanding with the Turks so as tobe able to resist Hungary and Poland .

After Stefan's death, the Turkish advance became a virtual ava-lanche. Michael the Valiant (1593-1601) of Walachia was able to stopthe Turkish progress and even to invade the Ottoman Empire . Yet hewas forced to halt his attack in order to repel a raid against Walachiaby the troops of Sigismund Bathory, King of Poland and Prince ofTransylvania. But before Michael's death at the hands of assassins sentby his ally, the Imperial Commissioner, General George Basta, he suc-ceeded in effecting a brief unification of Walachia, Moldavia, andTransylvania under one crown, thus realizing for the first time, sincethe fall of the Dacian Empire, the unity of the Rumanian nation .

The centuries of fratricidal wars had taken their toll . Hungary suf-fered a terrible defeat at Mohacs (August 30, 1526) ; Buda was sackedand burned, and all of Hungary except a fringe of its western andnorthern borders passed under Turkish domination and remained sountil 1686. In 1529 Suleiman was able to march to the very gates ofVienna. Poland's excursions in the south against Christian princesbegan a fatal weakening in her military power which was later one ofthe causes of the loss of her independence . By the same token theRumanian principalities suffered a destruction of their forces of resist-ance and, during desperate battles, a decimation of the best of theirruling classes. After the defeat at the Prut River, 1711, the Turks re-placed the native rulers of the principalities with princes of Greekorigin. Some of these were also, by maternal descent, of Rumanianblood and strove to satisfy the best interests of their people. Suchwere the Mavrocordatos who descended by feminine line from theextinct Mushat dynasty, others were completely foreign ; all were chosenand imposed by the Turks.

In 1827 the native rulers were restored, with Gregory Ghyka Princeof Walachia and John Alexander Sturdza Prince of Moldavia. The

Introduction / xiiiprincipalities were united, in 1859, under Prince Alexander John Cuza,thus forming the basis of the modern Rumanian nation . After theabdication of Cuza, Charles of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen was electedPrince. In 1877 after a victorious war, Rumania proclaimed her separa-tion from the Turkish empire, and she became an independent stateby the Treaty of Berlin . But the same treaty robbed her of her easternprovince of Bessarabia which was ascribed to her Russian ally . In1881 Rumania was declared a kingdom with Prince Charles becomingKing Carol I, and five years later she became a constitutional monarchywith a bicameral legislature .Despite centuries of wars and of foreign domination, the Rumanian

principalities were far from being primitive or backward . Over themany years, the Rumanians had developed a deeprooted and vitalnational culture . The years between 1827 and 1914 brought the greatflowering of this culture and of the nation itself, even though full unifi-cation of the Rumanian people was not achieved until 1919 . The upperclasses practised all the refinements of this most gracious era, and theireducation in Western Europe permitted them to combine the best ofRumanian culture with the best of France and Germany . From theprospering villages, a vigorous middle class (a class which had notexisted in Rumania's social structure until then) was arising andexpanding throughout the country and was striving to increase theintellectual level and the economic and industrial resources of thecountry. The peasantry, satisfied by the first agrarian reform, lived inpatriarchal relation with the boyards, the great landowners who bythis reform had yielded about one-third of their estates to their tenants .Education was compulsory and was free from primary school throughhigh school up to, and including, the last year of doctoral studiesat the universities. Because of the two charitable foundations, Bran-coveneasa and Sanct Spiridon, which were profusely endowed throughthe centuries by the nobility; the numerous public hospitals and clinicsbelonging to the foundations and to the state ; and the corps of state-paid doctors ; no one in Rumania was deprived of medical or surgicalcare for want of money. The Rumanian principalities were among thefirst nations to suppress the death penalty, doing so as early as 1859 .

Such was the state of affairs in Rumania at the outbreak of WorldWar I. Rumania suffered terribly during the war, but when peacefinally came, it brought the realization of the centuries old dream ofthe union of all Rumanians under one crown . Bucovina, which hadbeen seized by Austria in 1773, and Bessarabia, which had been grabbedby Russia in three steps from 1812 to 1878, were restored to the mother-land. But most important, Transylvania, which the Rumanians consid-ered the cradle of their nation, was reunited with the rest of the country .

xiv / Introduction

However the war brought great changes in Rumania as it did in allEuropean countries and in the United States . The old order was dead ;a new Order now emerged with ever-increasing power . The new orderof things was felt at once in Rumania : the Agrarian Reform of 1918-1920 passed into the hands of the peasants ninety-two percent of allRumania's arable land, but its fraudulent application ruined both thelarge and medium landowners. The destruction of the landowningclass eliminated the Conservative Party which had been the traditionalfactor of stability, of wise progressive advance, and of integrity andrectitude in Rumania's public life .

World War I was not, as generally believed, the result of only thenatural interplay of the ambitions of the Great Powers and of growingnationalism . Generalities and abstractions are not sufficient to causewars; wars are brought on by the actions of men, and in the case ofWorld War I (and as we shall see with World War II, also) these ac-tions were deliberately calculated to bring on war with all its miseryand suffering. The purpose of those who brought on the war was two-fold: first, the war by its own momentum would open huge cracks inthe foundation of Western Civilization by destroying the soundestvalues and most stable institutions in our civilization . Second, thepeace conferences following the war would be used to intensify theupheaval and to provide the foundation of a world-wide empire, to bebuilt first on the ruins of all European empires and of the civilizationthey had spread over the entire globe, and later on the ruins of theUnited States . Who were these men, and what was their goal?

They were and are a tightly knit clique of conspirators who, withrare exceptions, have been and are made up of, and recruited from, thevery top financial, economic, educational, and political levels of eachcountry in which they operate . The ultimate goal of this conspiracyis the absolute domination of the entire world to be accomplished bythe destruction of civilization through the merging of all nationalitiesand races into one people under one government ; the abolition of allprivate property ; the destruction of all religion ; and the abrogation ofall morality. The immediate goal of each generation of these conspir-ators was the reward, power and wealth and fame, which they receivedby advancing the final goal . The makeup and purpose of the conspiracywere explicitly defined by its founder, Adam Weishaupt, and embodiedin his organization, the Order of Illuminati, founded May 1, 1776 . TheIlluminati was strong enough by 1789 to play a major role in planningand precipitating the French Revolution, and members of the Orderheld power in France for about six years. After 1795 the Illuminati

Introduction / xv

went completely underground, and the secret of their existence be-came the fundamental law of the Order .

But despite the strict secrecy the Conspiracy maintained, we do havea considerable amount of information about its activities between 1795and 1917 when its principle arm, Communism, erupted in Russia . Achief agent of the Illuminati, Joseph Fouch6, was responsible for plac-ing a member of the Order, Jean Baptiste Bernadotte, on the throneof Sweden. It was an agency or ally of the Conspiracy, the League ofJust Men, which hired Karl Marx to write the Communist Manifesto .This group, which was renamed the League of Communists, was amajor factor in bringing about uprisings throughout Europe in 1848 .The Conspiracy played a more important role in organizing the ItalianRevolution, directed by the American Albert Pike, and also, apparently,the Juarezista Revolution in Mexico in the 1860's . Both the assassina-tion of Czar Alexander II and the Haymarket Riot in Chicago werethe work of related agencies of the Conspiracy . In fact throughout thelast half of the Nineteenth Century, the Order of Illuminati usedCommunists, socialists, anarchists, and numerous other groups andsubsidiaries to advance its goals and solidify its position in nearlyevery nation .

By 1914 the conspirators, although still comparatively few, had suf-ficient power and influence to precipitate World War I . At this pointit was not necessary for the Order to be able to control every action inthe war. The war itself, by its very nature, served many purposes of theconspirators . They only needed to direct it to the desired conclusion,which they had the ability to do ; and when this occurred with the ar-mistice, they held the control of the peace conferences . The war had soweakened Russia that Lenin, Trotsky and their band of vicious crimi-nals, financed and directed by associates throughout Europe and inthe United States, were able to seize power, replacing the truly progres-sive government of Nicholas II with reactionary Bolshevism . The peaceconference opened the way for the communization of Europe, and theLeague of Nations, to which it gave birth, was meant to further thegoals of the Conspiracy through the activities of its clique of "illumi-nated" or Fabian diplomats. (Although the refusal of America to jointhe League ruined its planned effectiveness, the League still servedmany useful purposes, not the least being as a forerunner of the UnitedNations .)These memoirs show the working of the entire, long-developing Con-

spiracy, which has been, and is, the basis of many separate plots andplans being carried out in every country. In this book the reader willfind the names of many of those who, for whatever reason, have carried

xvi / Introduction

the thread of a conspiracy, which has run through all human affairsfrom the time of the French Revolution to the present, and who havehelped to nurture and spread Communism-the biggest and most im-portant agency of the Illuminati-throughout the globe . Men such asLeon Blum, Edward Mandel House, Eduard Benes, Woodrow Wilson,Jean Barthou, David Lloyd George, Winston Churchill, AnthonyEden, Nicolae Titulescu, Carol II, Paul Reynaud, Georges Mandel,Edouard Daladier, and Joseph Paul-Boncour were not members of theCommunist Party, yet they served (many of them knowingly, we believe)Communist purposes far better than could have actual members of theCommunist Party . We believe that Prince Sturdza's memoirs offerconclusive evidence that this deeprooted, centrally controlled and di-rected Conspiracy, working for the destruction of Western Civilization,precipitated World War II . The members of the Order and its numerousdupes and allies had not the least concern for the welfare of the coun-tries they ruled or were appointed to serve ; time and again they sacrificedthe interests of their own nation to actions which directly aided Com-munism. From the end of World War I, these men have not merelytaken advantage of every opportunity to foster their plans, but ratherthey have even created the necessary events on which to build theirfurther advance. This book shows how this strategy was fulfilled inregard to World War II and its outcome . These memoirs show howmen of state worked feverishly to push Western Civilization to thebrink-and over. They first strove to create, nurture, and firmly es-tablish the Communist beast in Russia; next they introduced it intothe system of European alliances ; finally, they guaranteed politicallyand militarily that only Soviet Russia would be the victor and benefi-ciary in the war they brought down upon the world .The appearance of Communism in Russia, the treasonous actions of

so many men of state, and Communist agitation and infiltration inevery country and of every organ of society brought forth in eachcountry of Europe nationalist opposition to this International Conspir-acy. These opposition groups varied as greatly in their value, tenacity,and effectiveness as did the reaction of the Conspiracy to their emerg-ence. The Communists organized an international "crusade" in theirattempt to crush Spain's revolt against their domination . They arrangedfor the assassination of King Alexander of Yugoslavia in order toeliminate his opposition to what was in fact the surrender of Europe toCommunism. They infiltrated National Socialism and Fascism . Theyused the most vicious and ruthless means to destroy the national revivalin Rumania which was embodied in the Legionary Movement, a groupwhich might have, and almost did, thwart a major part of the plot tostart World War II .

Introduction / xviiThe Legionary Movement was founded on June 24, 1927, under the

name of the Legion of the Archangel Michael, by one of the truly greatmen of our era . Corneliu Codreanu was born on September 13, 1899 inHusi, a town in northern Moldavia, where his father was a teacher atthe local lycee . He attended the famous military school ManastireaDealului and the Infantry Officer's school . The beginning of what wasto be his career and mission can be dated from January 1918 . After theBolshevik takeover in Petrograd, the Russian troops which had beenfighting alongside their Rumanian allies degenerated into no morethan a collection of drinking, looting, raping rabble . During that fatefulJanuary, Codreanu organized a group of high school students to fightthe Russian marauders, who were menacing the Moldavian city of Iasi .Shortly thereafter he organized the Guard of National Conscience fromamong the students and workers of Iasi .

Codreanu reached what can be considered a point of no return in histragic life, a life entirely dedicated to the battle for the moral purityand the welfare and the glory of his nation, in 1922 when he organizedthe Association of Christian Students . He and twenty-six students tooka pledge of honor, in a religious ceremony, to continue for the rest oftheir lives the nationalist fight-a pledge to which many of them re-mained faithful even unto their deaths . In 1923 he founded the Leagueof National Christian Defense (LANC, which polled 120,000 votes inthe election of 1926) . When Codreanu returned to Rumania in 1927after a period of study at Grenoble University, LANC had disintegratedinto a collection of feuding splinter groups. From the best of theearlier league, he organized the Legion of the Archangel Michaelwhich came to be called the Legionary Movement . In 1930 a groupof hard-core members formed an elite section within the Legion, calledthe Iron Guard. In time the Legion came to be known by the nameof this elite group. Although the two are almost synonymous, thereader should keep in mind that they represent two different aspectsof the Movement.The purpose of the Legionary Movement was the defense of the

endangered nation and of all the spiritual and historic values whichformed the texture of Rumania's national existence . In many ways theLegionary Movement was unique and singularly Rumanian . But itspurity of motivation, its unyielding adherence to the very fundamentalsof our civilization and its oneness with all the ideals of Christendomgave it a quality which will endure as one of the great examples ofman's fight against evil . The Legion was not a political organization,yet it strove to revive the Rumanian body politic . The Legion was nota religious body, yet Christian belief and Christian principles permeatedevery level and every tenet of the Movement . Corneliu Codreanu came

xviii / Introductionupon the stage of Rumanian history when all that generations hadbuilt and had cherished was being imperiled by the most venal ofpoliticians and the most corrupt of kings. His answer to the problemswhich faced his motherland was to bring about a rebirth of spirituality,of self-denial, and of responsibility in the soul of every Rumanian . Ifhe failed in his goal, it was not due to any shortcomings in the sub-stance of the Legion, or to any flaw in the nature of the Rumanianpeople, but to the incredible persecutions by the corrupt governmentsunder King Carol and because of the aid given these governments bythe International Conspiracy. The same diabolic forces which destroyedthe Legion and Rumania are now threatening the very existence ofthe United States . If an organization can be judged by its enemies, thequality of the detractors of the Legion, past and present, place it highamongst the champions of Christian Civilization .

Prince Sturdza joined with the Legion because he found in it thelinks with times gone by and with the essential headsprings of the past,which had been completely lost in his country by the existing politicalestablishment ; because he realized that, with the Conservative Partydestroyed, the Legion offered the only possible salvation for Rumania .Prince Sturdza's memoirs portray the Legion far better than we can doin this Introduction, but we would still like to quote a few passagesfrom Legionary material. We do so partly because they form the veryfabric of the Legionary Movement, but also because we know that thesehigh ideals continued to motivate the Legion through all its history .Furthermore, we believe that these principles still live today in thehearts of Rumanians, both those in exile and those enslaved in theirown homeland .

The Legionary Movement is not founded exclusively on the principle ofauthority nor on that of liberty, but on the principle of love . Love cannotbreed tyranny and injustice, nor sanguinary revolutions and social wars .

The Legionary Movement will never resort to complot or a coup in orderto win. By the very essence of our beliefs we are against conspiracy . Thiswould mean violence of an outward character, while we expect victory froman inner realization of the nation's soul .

We think it is fitting to quote the basic rules of the organization .These are contained in the Manual of Legionary Laws, written for theuse of the head of each Legionary group .

The Law of Discipline : Legionary be obedient ; without discipline wewill not win . Follow your chief for better or worse .The Law of Work: Do your daily work . Work with joy. Let the reward

of your work be not any material profit, but the satisfaction that you have

Introduction / xixcontributed something to the glory of the Legion and the greatness of yourcountry .The Law of Silence : Talk little. Talk only when you must . Your elo-

quence is in deeds. Let others talk; you do .The Law of Education : You must become another man . A hero.The Law of Assistance : Help your brother in distress . Do not abandon

him .The Law of Honor: Follow only the ways shown by honor . Fight . Never

be a coward . Leave to others the ways of infamy . Better fall fighting theway of honor, than to conquer by infamy .

If the Legionary Movement had been just another political party orif it had been an eccentric collection of students, it probably wouldhave been left unmolested . But it was neither . It was a grassroots up-rising of the best in Rumania striving to maintain and to perfect thenational character and to make Rumania a bastion of Christianity andanti-Communism. Rumania was too important in the plans of theConspiracy, and the Legion too great a threat, for the conspirators topermit it to survive . Thus they used the most brutal means to crushthe Legion-including the murder of Codreanu. With the death of theCaptain, as he was called, the Legion was temporarily dispersed, itsmembers either going underground or into exile . Amongst the exileswho gathered in Berlin, a young professor of literature, Horia Sima,soon rose to leadership by the pure force of his personality .

In 1940 Sima secretly re-entered Rumania in order to help end thedespotic regime of King Carol . Sima was arrested at once, but the tideof events had so completely turned against Carol that he immediatelyfreed Sima and placed him and some other Legionaries in minor postsin the Government as a last attempt to save his throne . However theLegionaries found it impossible to work with the King, and they re-signed almost at once . Shortly thereafter they were able to force Carol'sabdication in favor of his son Michael in an almost bloodless revolt .But Carol's last act was to appoint General Ion Antonescu, a non-Legionary and in fact a secret enemy of the Legion, as President.Under Antonescu a National Legionary Government-which the Legionwould never control-was formed with Horia Sima Vice President andPrince Michel Sturdza Minister of Foreign Affairs .

When the Legionary Government came to power, Europe was alreadyin the throes of a western war-a war that never should have been .The German National Socialist State was infiltrated by Communists,some of whom occupied very high positions. Informed people stronglybelieve Communist or pro-Communist agents had aided the NationalSocialists in coming to power on the theory that they could use Ger-

xx / Introduction

many as a foil to enable the Soviets to provoke a war in the West ; sucha strategy would thus make the Western powers a virtual ally of theCommunists before any possible German onslaught against Soviet Rus-sia. And, indeed, what should have been a war, perhaps even a crusade,against the Communist beast, became a suicidal struggle between non-Communist countries. But Prince Sturdza is convinced, together withProfessor H. R. Trevor-Roper and so many other students of the originsof World War II, that Hitler himself never wanted a war in the Westand that his great goal, as events demonstrate, was the destruction ofthe Soviet Union. Communism was saved and made victorious in greatpart because of the Conspiracy's diplomatic successes in 1936 .After the assassination in 1934 of King Alexander of Yugoslavia,

the greatest obstacle to the Barthou-Titulescu-Bene"s plan to encircleGermany, the balance of power between the anti-Communists and pro-Communists was thrown to the Left. The Western anti-Communistleaders had supported a quadripartite pact proposed by Mussoliniwhich would have been a renewal of the Pact of Locarno and whichwas, in reality, meant for the common defense of Europe against SovietRussia. The pact included the Western allies of World War I and Ger-many, and it would have established an anti-Communist core in Europe .But although all parties signed it, the treaty never came into force be-cause it was not ratified by the French Parliament . It was quite anotherarrangement which finally triumphed : the pact of military alliancebetween France, Czecho-Slovakia, and Soviet Russia ratified in 1936 andthe major cause of the disaster to come . It introduced Russia into themainstream of Western diplomacy, perfected the encirclement of Ger-many, and instead of protecting Europe from the Soviets, it protectedthe Soviets from Germany's growing military might .

But the pact with Soviet Russia was going to be of absolutely nobenefit to France or Czecho-Slovakia, and would probably never havebeen ratified by the French Parliament, unless a route could befound to enable the Red Army to join in any conflict that might arisebetween France or Czecho-Slovakia with Germany . Poland and theBaltic states stubbornly refused to permit such passage under any pre-text. Thus the worth of the pact depended entirely upon the Red Armybeing able to cross through Rumanian territory to Czecho-Slovakiawithout any opposition . It is Prince Sturdza's contention, which hebelieves he has proven, that it was the secret consent given to this pas-sage, or the secret promise that this consent would be given whenneeded, by the two men who controlled the foreign policy of Rumaniabetween 1933 and 1940, Titulescu and King Carol, and the servility oftheir subordinates, that permitted the advocates of the Franco-Sovietalliance to triumph in Paris over those of an anti-Communist federa-

Introduction / xxition. It is also his contention that it was the military pacts with theKremlin which were the primus motor of World War II and of itscatastrophic consequences . Thus Rumania played a key role in the plansof the Conspiracy, and this explains the reason for the incredible perse-cution of the Legionary Movement, which could have, and would have,stopped any cooperation with Soviet Russia, thus ruining the plans ofthe Conspiracy .

The effects of the Franco-Soviet and Czecho-Soviet treaties were im-mediate. Germany was surrounded and desperately needed to adjust thebalance of power, and she needed to protect herself on her western andsouthern borders . Therefore she reoccupied the Rhineland, on the basisthat the Franco-Soviet alliance invalidated the Pact of Locarno. Sheproclaimed the Anschluss with Austria to the general enthusiasm of thepopulation, and when submitted for approval to the people of GreaterGermany, it was approved by 99 .08% of the voters. She demanded thereturn to Greater Germany of the three and a half million Germans,which the Versailles Treaty had incorporated, after the Austrian Empirewas dismembered, into Czecho-Slovakia. Contrary to popular belief,sanity won out for a moment at Munich, and after years of harassmentand treachery on the part of the government in Prague, what was prob-ably the best possible arrangement was agreed to by the Big Powers .But all was for naught; the conspirators pulling the strings soon hadthe very men who saved Europe in 1938 destroy it in 1939 . Germanyhad been maneuvered into a trap, which would be sprung by the hopelessPolish problem. The Polish crisis was hopeless not because the disagree-ment between Germany and Poland was so great (the issue involvedwas chiefly a matter of border adjustments) or because of an ancientnational enmity (Germany and Poland had in recent years enjoyed ex-cellent relations). The problem was made hopeless by the interventionof Western diplomats, who constantly advised and told the Polish notto negotiate; and by Poles such as Marshal 8migly-Rydz, who threwtheir country into a war she could not possibly win . Germany was forcedinto a war against the West because the leaders of Western Europemade all other courses of action impossible. Germany did not sign thenon-aggression pact with Soviet Russia in order to be free to conquerthe West. The pact was an expedient and nothing more . Its purposewas to secure her rear position in order to be free to destroy the SovietUnion when the time came . (Hitler abhorred the idea of a two frontwar. It is ironic, and significant, that he had to conquer the West in orderto fight the East.) When war came England and France did nothing tohelp Poland. Prince Sturdza contends that at no moment were the so-licitudes shown by the Western Powers and the vain guarantees theyoffered Poland motivated by any real intention to save her integrity and

xxii / Introduction

her independence. He is convinced, on the contrary, that as far as theWestern statesmen were concerned, Poland was sacrificed even beforethe beginning of the armed conflict .

With the fall of Poland, France was released from any obligation tocontinue the war (which she had not even fought), and she could havereached a satisfactory settlement with Germany . But the same leaderswho had pushed Poland over the brink now threw their own nationinto defeat. The onslaught came on May 10, 1940 and by June 14, 1940the war for France was over . Now Hitler began to prepare his waragainst Russia ; he refused to first eliminate England, and did not con-sider the United States a threat . When Germany invaded Russia, shecould have wiped Communism off the map . That she failed was greatlydue to Communist influences in the governments of the West, and also,no doubt, to the Communist agents high in her own government. Thefinal ground work for the destruction of Germany and the victory ofCommunism was laid approximately between the summer of 1940 andthe close of 1941 . There were three major reasons for Germany's defeat :Italy's loss of the opportunity to be a mediator between Germany andthe West because of Mussolini's cowardly aggression against France, andItaly's disastrous campaign against Greece ; Germany's mistreatment of theRussian populations in occupied territory ; and Admiral Canaris's treasonin conjunction with Communist infiltration of the German Govern-ment. The second and third causes are closely connected.

From the beginning of the war, the German Government showed littleeagerness or even willingness to cooperate with the truly nationalist or-ganizations which existed in the countries within her sphere of influ-ence. These nationalist groups were willing to help Germany econom-ically in her struggle, but not to the detriment of their own country'svital necessities . Yet, once they were the military allies of the Reichagainst their monstrous neighbor, they would never have capitulated tothe Red Army the moment the tide seemed to have turned against Ger-many, but rather they would have fought to the last man in the struggleagainst Communism and for the preservation of their national integrity .In reality the Germans followed a policy of opposing the nationalists,allegedly in order to advance the military and industrial resources ofthe Reich. It is impossible to state unequivocally that this policy wasformulated by crypto-Communist infiltrators . However it did result inthe overthrow of the Legionary Government by General Antonescuwhich ultimately brought the capitulation of Rumania. It ruined theanti-Communist cause in Yugoslavia and brought on an unnecessary warwith that nation, tying down troops desperately needed on the Russianfront. It reached its climax in the incredibly brutal handling of the

Introduction / xxiii

Ukraine-and in this case there are definite indications of Communisthands at work .

Our knowledge of the actual Communist activity in the German Gov-ernment is still quite sketchy. In most cases we cannot be certain ofexactly who the Communist agents were nor where they operated . Thisis so partly because many, but not all, were never members of the actualCommunist Party and because most of the agents were probably in sec-ond echelon positions rather than at the top . But what we do know givesa hint of what actually existed . Prince Sturdza relates, from his ownexperience, the story of Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, head of the GermanIntelligence Service . Canaris was not subject to the discipline of theCommunist Party but rather took his orders from the Conspiracy's so-cialist clique based in Britain-the Fabians . His network riddled theSecret Service and infiltrated the Foreign Office and the Wehrmacht .Two of his confessed co-workers were Baron Weizsacker, an Undersecre-tary of State, and General Halder, Chief of the General Staff . TheCanaris conspiracy played a major role in bringing about the defeat ofGermany and the victory of Soviet Russia .While the Canaris network was supplying Hitler with false informa-

tion concerning the Russian military situation, Richard Sorge, a Sovietagent and press attache at the German Embassy in Tokyo, was keepingStalin informed of German and Japanese military developments . In1939 he supplied the date of Germany's planned attack on Poland ; inApril 1941 he advised Moscow that Germany was concentrating 150divisions at the borders of the USSR, and he supplied a general schemeof the military operations, including the date for the attack, June 22 ;and two months before December 7, 1941, he advised Moscow that Japanwas preparing for a war in the Pacific and would not attack the SovietFar East. Thus the German attack against the Soviet Union was not asurprise at all, and Stalin had ample time to prepare his defenses . TheSoviet Army was not taken off guard as is often believed . Stalin hadmassed approximately four and a half million men in the western fron-tier area-a million and a half more men than made up the Germanattack forces, but whole Russian units surrendered almost without fight-ing and thus enabled other units, divisions, and corps to be surroundedand captured. It was only after the Wehrmacht was forced to submit tothe orders inspired by Rosenberg to wage a war of extermination thatthe real Russian resistance began . Also the Kremlin could depend on itsfriends in the Reich for information . The flow of intelligence data fromvarious sources continued throughout the war . Soviet agent AlexanderRado in Switzerland was able to advise Moscow of decisions of the Ger-man High Command within forty-eight hours after they were made . Thesource was on the German General Staff . Was it General Halder?

xxiv / Introduction

Who else was involved? Martin Bormann certainly must be considered .In fact Cornelius Ryan, author of The Longest Day and The Last Battlerelates that "some German generals believe he was a Russian spythroughout the war ." (New York Journal American, March 19, 1966 .)Bormann's influence and power were tremendous and most certainly notused in the best interests of Germany . This, of course, could be ex-plained by the view that he was exactly what he appeared to be-apower hungry fanatic. But it is most significant that doubts still persist :to whom was Martin Bormann really loyal? And let us not forget thatmen who knew him believed that he was a Communist agent .

The question of actual loyalty can be raised about another sinistercharacter high in the National Socialist Government, Heinrich Himm-ler, but in this case any definite conclusion is most difficult to reach . Itwas under Himmler's command that the great atrocities of the ThirdReich were committed. Yet many of his lieutenants found little diffi-culty in changing uniforms when the Reich fell . One, Heinrich Muller,Chief of the Gestapo, was in contact with the Russian Secret Service atleast as early as 1943 . He escaped from Berlin, and some of his col-leagues believe that he is now in the service of the Soviet secret police .In fact an article in Die Stern (January 12, 1964) claimed that Mullerhad been identified as a captain in the Albanian security police . WhenHimmler absorbed Canaris's Abwehr, the files were full of the proof ofCanaris's treason and of that of his colleagues . Yet Himmler did nothingwith this information . When Canaris was finally exposed a year later, itwas through sources completely separate from Himmler's apparati . Wewill probably never know the real reason for his failure to take actionin this case or for his many other activities . But let us recall that it wasAlfred Rosenberg's advice which caused Hitler to transform the war ofliberation, which the Fiihrer had so successfully commenced in Russia,into a war of annihiliation . And it is well known that Rosenberg wasHimmler's man .

In this light the outbursts of Hitler to the effect that the war wasbeing lost by treason no longer seem like the ravings of a mad man . Hemay have become aware that he himself was little more than a pawn.For in his charges of treason, Hitler was correct : Germany's war againstRussia was not lost at Stalingrad ; it was lost in Berlin .

Despite the conspiracy and brutality which were so rampant in theThird Reich, many Germans and other Europeans still considered thewar against Soviet Russia a crusade to save Western Civilization fromdestruction by Communism . The men who fought and died in the strug-gle in the East have been condemned, partly because they lost, but thesoundness of their fear of Soviet Russia has been borne out by history.

Introduction / xxvThe Legionary Movement and the Rumanian people supported Ger-

many in the war, but the best interests of their country left little othercourse even considered from the most pragmatic point of view . Cooper-ation with the West or permanent neutrality was out of the question,for the policies and corruption of Titulescu and Carol had left Rumaniaunable to defend herself against either Germany or Russia, much lessagainst both as would have been necessary. Such a policy would haveturned Rumania, from the very first days of the war, into a huge battle-ground and then into an occupied appendage of one or the other power .A Soviet alliance would have meant absorption by Russia, or at best,occupation by Germany as a defeated enemy . A German alliance wasthe only recourse open to Rumania . But in forming this alliance theRumanians were not simply bowing to expediency ; they firmly believedthat their national existence and Christian Civilization could only besaved by the destruction of Communism in Russia . The nations of Cen-tral Europe chose from the above alternatives in varying manners, yetthey all fell under the heel of the Soviet Union . Poland fought the jointattack of Russia and Germany, Czecho-Slovakia maintained a solidlypro-Soviet alliance, Rumania and Hungary formed German alliances,Bulgaria maintained a pro-German neutrality, Yugoslavia maintainedan anti-German neutrality, and Albania committed no crime but to beoccupied by Italy ; but all ended under the same tyranny .

The most important point which these memoirs make clear is thatWorld War II was brought on and concluded according to a deliberateplan developed and carried out by a conspiracy of a small, centrally di-rected group of men high in the governments of nearly every nation .That the Conspiracy intended to deliver all of Eastern Europe to Com-munism is made clear by its activities as the war came to a close.After the debacle at Stalingrad, the possibilities of a German victory

in Russia were ruined, but the war was by no means over . As the Ger-man and allied armies pulled back towards the west, they desperatelyattempted to form a line of resistance to the Russian onslaught ; oncesuch a defensive line was formed two courses of action would becomeavailable. The first one, and the one on which Hitler based his strategy,was to hold all possible points in the east in the belief that it was onlya matter of time before the United States and Britain would come tosee Soviet Russia as their real enemy . Hitler would have then signed aseparate peace with the West, and with the aid of his new allies hewould have mounted a great counteroffensive which would totally crushthe Red Army. As late as March 1945 German troops were ordered tohold, at all costs, bridgeheads across the Oder because they would beneeded as launching points for the joint attack. Whether or not the

xxvi / Introduction

Allies could have even considered such an arrangement is immaterial .For the second possibility provided by a stabilized line of defense fromthe Communist hordes offered to the Western powers an opportunity tosave Eastern Europe even without accepting Germany as an ally . Thosewho fought and died to form this line of defense and to permit, thereby,the penetration of Western armies deep into the East fought and diedin vain. The Western Powers, conforming to the pre-established plansof the Conspiracy, had decided as early as the conferences at Quebec andTeheran to allow the Red Army to advance up to Berlin, Prague, andVienna and had consented to abandon eleven European countries as preyfor the Communist behemoth . The Western Allies had thus refused totake advantage of this opportunity to save millions of innocent peoplesfrom brutal slavery . Instead they halted at the Elbe .

How complete was the subservience of Washington and London to thewishes of the Conspiracy became absolutely clear in February 1945 . Hit-ler sent a message to Mihailovich, the heroic leader of the Chetniks ofYugoslavia, to be relayed to the British . Hitler offered to withdraw allGerman troops from the Balkans if the United States and Englandwould agree to start occupying the abandoned area within twenty-fourhours; after the West had completely occupied the Balkans, Germanywould withdraw from Hungary and Czecho-Slovakia, again on the con-dition that the West fill the vacuum. The Allies refused even to considerthe proposal, telling Mihailovich to have the Germans make their offerto Russia .

The war ended with Germany smashed and half-occupied by the Sovi-ets, with Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, Czecho-Slovakia, Hungary,Rumania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, and Albania under Communist rule,and with only Soviet Russia victorious . Those military or civilian lead-ers who had opposed Communism for so long were executed, imprisoned,or forced into exile . But these memoirs provide a stern lesson for thosewho today believe that they can reach an accommodation with the Com-munists . For as Prince Sturdza points out, the "Liberals," the appeasers,and the non-Communists, who had opposed the war against the SovietUnion, had sabotaged the war effort, and had betrayed their own coun-try into Communist hands, were among the first to be victimized by thebeast. They too were executed, imprisoned, or forced into exile-notwith the knowledge that they had fought to the end against their na-tion's implacable enemy, but with the indelible stain of having helpedin the defeat of their own motherland .

The publishers of this book do not necessarily agree with all of theopinions expressed by Prince Sturdza, nor are they necessarily in agree-ment with all of his interpretations of the events and actions which led

Introduction / xxviito World War II. However the publishers do believe that Prince Sturdzahas a responsibility to express his views and that the public should havethe opportunity to consider them, particularly since Prince Sturdza'slifelong experience and activity in the diplomatic field have given hima tremendous insight into the events of the Twentieth Century. Further-more, histories of World War II, as a rule, have been written from theWestern point of view . This book presents for the first time the trueEastern point of view, and the publishers believe that it is a major addi-tion to the literature dealing with Europe between the two wars. A re-viewer of the French preview of this book has stated an opinion sharedby the publishers : It is now impossible to write a history of World WarII without referring to the memoirs of Prince Michel Sturdza .

Critics who have never opposed the Conspiracy which has murdereduntold millions, and who still refuse to take cognizance of its existence,may be tempted to justify their complacency and ignorance by trying tofind fault with the views and actions of Prince Sturdza and the Legion-ary Movement. But such play will not change the history of this centurynor will it prevent the impending destruction of our whole Civilization .

Prince Sturdza had the foresight to realize that the Communist Con-spiracy was the greatest danger ever faced by his motherland and byWestern Civilization itself, and he had the courage to sacrifice all in hisfight against the beast . Rumania fell because too few people in Europeand the United States were willing to recognize the threat from Com-munism. Since that time the Conspiracy has enslaved a third of the globeand is rapidly approaching its final goal . Prince Sturdza has continuedhis battle, and he offers these memoirs in the hope that others will learnthe lessons of history. The warning is clear and, if it is not heeded, theUnited States too will suffer the fate it allowed to befall so many mil-lions. But this time there will not even be a place of exile .

Thomas J. Haas

Note to the Reader

For a clear understanding of the events as they took place, the readeris urged to refer frequently to the sequence of time and dates listed inthe Analytical Chronology

We wish also to call your attention to the Index of Persons in the backof the book which gives a biographical sketch of the political and his-torical personalities presented in these memoirs .

Analytical Chronology

Collective security, indivisible peace . . . this means simply a pro-Sovietcrusade in the event of a Russian-German conflict .

SAINT-AULAIREAmbassador of France(Geneve contre la Paix)

PART I

1917March 12-16. Prince Georgi Lvov heads a Russian Provisional Govern-

ment. Alexander Kerensky is Minister of Justice . Czar Nicholas IIabdicates in favor of his brother Michael . Michael abdicates in fa-vor of the Provisional Government.

April 17 . Lenin, Zinoviev, Lunacharski and other Bolsheviks, the ma-jority of them from New York, arrive in Petrograd where Trotskyand other New York Bolsheviks have already settled .

May 16 . Kerensky becomes Minister of War and starts immediately thesystematic disintegration of the Russian Army with the famousPrikase No . I .

July 16-18. Bolsheviks make a premature attempt to seize power inPetrograd .

July 20. Prince Lvov resigns . Kerensky Prime Minister.September 8-14 . Kerensky prevents General Kornilov from saving Pet-

rograd. Arrests him, but releases from prison Trotsky and otherterrorists .

November 6 (0. S. October 24) . The Bolshevik Revolution . Kerensky es-capes to Finland and then to Paris . Eleven years later he arrivesin New York where Governor Lehman convinces him with irre-sistible arguments, the very day of his arrival, to give up any ideaof campaigning against the Soviet Government .

November 7 . A new Government in Petrograd, headed by Lenin . In-cluding Trotsky as Commissar for Foreign Affairs and Stalin asCommissar for Minorities. Majority of the Government of NewYork origin . They assume the name of Council of the People's Com-

xxxi

xxxii

Analytical Chronology

missars. Russian troops in Rumania, in full anarchy, roam the coun-try menacing Iasi, the seat of the Government . They are either dis-armed or beaten back. There is fighting in Bessarabia .

1918January 1-15 . In Rumania, in the woods of Dobrina, the young Cor-

neliu Codreanu gathers his first followers in order to resist themutinous attacks of the Russian troops .

July 16-17 . Murder of Czar Nicholas and the Imperial Family .

1919January 7 . President Wilson orders William H . Buckler, a trouble-

shooter attached to the United States Embassy in London, to pro-ceed "at the earliest possible moment to Stockholm" to confer withrepresentatives of the Bolshevik Government .

January 14, 15, 16. Buckler confers with Maxim Litvinov in Stockholm .January 21 . Wilson submits Buckler's report of the Stockholm meeting

to the Big Five in Paris. The "conciliatory attitude of the SovietGovernment is unquestionable," wrote Buckler . Furthermore,"agreement with Russia can take place at once, obviating conquestand policing and reviving normal conditions as disinfectant againstBolshevism."

February 22. William C. Bullitt, accompanied by radical journalist Lin-coln Steffens, leaves Paris for Russia and a meeting with Bolshevikofficials .

March 10 . Bullitt arrives in Petrograd and is accompanied to Moscowby Grigori Chicherin and Maxim Litvinov.

March 14 . Lenin presents Bullitt with a Soviet peace plan drafted byLitvinov.

May 4 . Slovak General Milan R. 9tefanik dies in a mysterious airplanecrash over Bratislava. Czech Eduard Beneg supplants him not onlyin the history of Czecho-Slovakia but also in that of Europe .

August 4 . Rumanian troops occupy Budapest . Despite the violent oppo-sition of the Supreme Council, the Rumanian Army liberates Hun-gary from the Bela Kun Communist terror after two weeks of fight-ing the Red rabble .

1920January 14 . French General Maurice Janin, Commander-in-Chief of the

Allied troops in Siberia, orders the Czecho-Slovak Legion to kidnapAdmiral Aleksandr Kolchak, Supreme Ruler of Russia and leaderof the anti-Bolshevik resistance, and to hand him over to the Bol-shevik Political Centre at Irkutsk in exchange for one-third of the

Analytical Chronology / xxxiii

bullion of the Russian Imperial Treasury which was under Kol-chak's control. This bullion went to form the first national treasuryof the newly invented country of Czecho-Slovakia where 7,000,000Czechs held sway over 8,200,000 non-Czechs .

February 7 . Admiral Kolchak and his Prime Minister, Victor Pepeliaev,are executed. General Janin was never court-martialled, arraigned,or even blamed .

February 11 . In Rumania, Corneliu Codreanu and the labor leaderConstantin Pancu forcibly take a factory from the hands of theCommunists .

April 25 . Beginning of the war between Poland and Soviet Russia .September 30 . In Rumania, Corneliu Codreanu and his followers fore-

stall an attempt by the Rector of the University of Iasi to open theacademic year without the traditional religious ceremony .

October 5 . Moscow asks for an armistice .October 12 . Preliminary treaty of peace between Poland and Russia

signed in Riga.1921

March 3 . Signing of the Rumano-Polish Treaty of Alliance, the onlysafeguard Rumania ever had against a Soviet onslaught .

March 18 . Definitive Treaty of Riga signed . Polish-Russian frontier de-fined .

March-June . Negotiations and conclusion of the Little Entente betweenRumania, Yugoslavia, and Czecho-Slovakia, strictly limited to con-trolling Hungary's irredentist aspirations . Masaryk and Bene"s stub-bornly oppose a larger coalition including Poland and the BalticStates proposed by Rumania as a guarantee against Soviet territorialand messianic ambitions . Czecho-Slovakia is the only beneficiary ofthe Little Entente, Rumania and Yugoslavia being more than amatch for Hungary . The Prague Government always refused toguarantee or even to acknowledge the frontiers of Soviet Russia'sneighbors .

March-June. Great Britain and France recognize de facto the SovietGovernment as the legitimate Government of Russia . (Consolida-tion under the invisible control of the Anonymous Forces, of theunholy alliance of the Western Powers-Soviet Union which willlead the world to World War II and to its fateful and still unpre-dictable consequences.)

1922April 6. The Soviet delegation headed by Grigori Chicherin arrives in

Genoa to meet the British, French, North American, Italian, andGerman delegations .

xxxiv / Analytical Chronology

April 10. Beginning of the Genoa Conference with Soviet Russia's par-ticipation .

April 15 . Secret negotiations between the German and the Soviet dele-gations begin at two o'clock a .m .

April 16. Surprise conclusion of the Treaty of Rapallo between Germanyand Soviet Russia . "A bomb in the sky of the Conference . It willupset the world," said U .S. Ambassador Richard Washburn Child .This happened seventeen years later .

May 19 . Genoa Conference collapses over the insistence of France thatRussia recognize its pre-war debt .

October 15 . In Rumania. Coronation in Alba Iulia of King Ferdinandand Queen Marie, in the same city where three centuries beforeMichael the Valiant was proclaimed Sovereign of all Rumanians .

1923

March 4 . In Rumania. Formation of the League of National Defenseby Professor Alexandru Cuza and Corneliu Codreanu .

March 24 . Codreanu arrested for the first time by the Liberal Govern-ment .

November 8-11 . Hitler-Ludendorff Putsch in Munich .

1924

April 2 . Breaking up of Rumano-Soviet negotiations, which had startedone week before in Vienna upon insistence of our French allies.

May 31 . Codreanu arrested again with fifty other students, boys and girls .Beginning of what has been called the Manciu Terror, under a Lib-eral Government. In prison the students are submitted to the mostcruel tortures and abject humiliations . They are liberated after theintervention of a group of university professors and important citi-zens. Manciu, the Police Prefect of Iasi, and his deputies, promotedand decorated by the Government .

October 25 . Codreanu shoots Manciu in self-defense when Manciu at-tempts to arrest him again .

October 28. Following the example of Great Britain (February 1), Franceextends de jure recognition to the U .S .S.R. Rumania and Yugo-slavia refuse recognition .

1925January 5 . In Rumania. Great manifestations of sympathy for Corneliu

Codreanu throughout the whole country. The Government changesthe venue of the trial from Iasi to Focsani .

Analytical Chronology / xxxv

May 20. The manifestations of sympathy and admiration growing inintensity, the Government changes once more the venue fromFocsani to Turnu Severin at the other extremity of the country .

May 26. Codreanu acquitted by the Turnu Severin court . General man-ifestation of enthusiasm throughout the country .

December 1 . Signing of the Locarno Treaties . Agreement of guaranteebetween France, Great Britain, Germany, Italy, and Belgium .

1926January 20. As a result of his scandalous conduct, Prince Carol of Ru-

mania is deprived of his rights of inheritance . His son PrinceMichael proclaimed heir to the throne by Act of Parliament .

April 24 . Treaty of German-Soviet friendship and neutrality. Extendsthe Rapallo Treaty of 1922 .

September 8 . Germany admitted to the League of Nations. Permanentseat on Council .

1927May 26 . Temporary rupture of diplomatic relations between Great

Britain and Soviet Russia due to friction caused by Communistagitation . Violation of treaty agreements .

June 24 . In Rumania. Founding of the Legion of the Archangel Michael .July 20. Death of King Ferdinand of Rumania . Michael proclaimed

King. Constitution of a Regency headed by Prince Nicholas, brotherof Carol .

August 21 . Congress of the National Socialist Party in Nurnberg . Twentythousand Storm Troopers present .

November 30. A Soviet delegation arrives in Geneva to take part in thedeliberations of the preparatory commission on disarmament .

1928August 27 . Kellogg-Briand Pact signed at Paris. Russia concurs on Sep-

tember 6. Renunciation of aggressive war . No provision for sanc-tions .

November 25 . Communist trouble in Bucharest .

1929February 9 . Signing in Moscow by Soviet Russia, Poland, Rumania,

Latvia, and Estonia of the Litvinov Protocol giving immediate va-lidity to the Kellogg-Briand Pact between those five countries . Nextday an article in Pravda reminds the Rumanian plenipotentiary ofSoviet Russia's pretensions upon Rumanian territory .

xxxvi / Analytical Chronology

April 7 . Communist trouble in Timisoara. Several dead .August 17 . Communist trouble in Lupeni : twenty-five dead.October 7 . Death of Gheorghe Buzdugan, the most important personal-

ity in the Rumanian Regency .December 15-25 . Two important Legionary rallies in Branesti and Lu-

goj . Illegal intervention of the authorities . The Movement takes ongreater proportions every day. Many adherents in the workingclasses .

1930January 20-March 25 . Intensification of the Legionary activities with

anti-Communist accent. In Kagul 20,000 peasants come to listen toCodreanu. Great anti-Communist manifestation in Bucharest March25.

June 6. Carol's return to Rumania with Magda (Elena) Lupescu . Betray-ing the promise he had made to all his supporters during his exile,to the writer of these pages among others, he refuses to resume, atleast ostensibly, conjugal life with Princess Helene and to proclaimher Queen . Starts living in open concubinage with Magda Lupescu .

June 20 . Codreanu creates a new organization to defend Rumaniaagainst Communism, in all its disguises, on the home front andagainst Soviet undertakings on the outer front . He calls this newforce the Iron Guard which will later become identified with theLegionary Movement.

July 25 . Codreanu arrested again, under a National Peasant Govern-ment, and tried in a fraudulent case . Acquitted after two monthsin prison. There were still at that time judges in Rumania .

November 14. Communist trouble in Bucharest .

PART II

1931January 11 . The Legionary Movement dissolved for the first time, by a

National Peasant Government . Mass arrests, new persecutions . An-other fraudulent case against the Movement . Unqualified acquit-tals from the lowest to the highest courts for all Legionary leaders .Carol's corruption has not had time yet to penetrate all of the Stateinstitutions.

April 18 . King Carol forms an Iorga-Argetoianu Government .June 1 . New Elections. Codreanu elected to Parliament .December 3. Codreanu's speech in Parliament . Cardinal points of the

Analytical Chronology / xxxvii

policy of the Legionary Movement: God, Country, King, Ownership,Army, Relentless Fight against Communism .

1932

March-April . Rumano-Soviet negotiations in Riga for a pact of non-aggression. The French Government has asked its allies Rumaniaand Poland to try to come to a non-aggression agreement with theirRussian neighbor, in order to further its purpose to conclude amilitary alliance with Soviet Russia ; a purpose which was sharedby Benes and Titulescu. The negotiations are broken off by theRumanian negotiator when, at the moment of signing the textagreed upon, the Russian delegate pretends to introduce a clausealluding to Soviet Russia's pretensions upon a part of Rumania'sterritory. France, the middleman, had given the Rumanian Gov-ernment the assurance that the Soviets will not raise any territorialquestion .

March 13 . Presidential elections in Germany . Hitler receives 11,339,446votes (30.1 percent) . President von Hindenburg fails to receive anabsolute majority .

March 15 . The Legionary Movement dissolved for the second time, bythe Iorga-Argetoianu Government . The most arbitrary and uncon-stitutional measures are taken against its members . Mass arrests,beatings, and tortures .

April 10. Hindenburg is reelected. But Hitler receives 13,418,547 votes(36 .8 percent) .

May 6 . Murder of Paul Doumer, President of the French Republic, byDr. Paul Gourgoulov, a Russian 6migr6 .

May 31 . The Iorga-Argetoianu Government resigns. Replaced by a Na-tional Peasant Government, headed by Alexandru Vaida-Voevod .

July 31 . Reichstag elections . Hitler's National Socialists win 230 seats ;Socialists 133; Center 97 ; Communists 89. Total National Socialistvote is 13,745,000.

September 12 . Reichstag dissolved .October 10 . Nicolae Titulescu, Rumanian Minister of Foreign Affairs .

Convokes immediately the French and Polish Envoys, thanks theirgovernments for their support during the Riga negotiations, butasks those governments to negotiate their agreements with So-viet Russia without any consideration for the Rumanian positiontowards Moscow. As a consequence France and all of Soviet Rus-sia's neighbors, except Rumania, have pacts of non-aggression withSoviet Russia before the end of 1933 .

xxxviii / Analytical Chronology

November 6 . Election in Germany fails to break parliamentary dead-lock.

1933January 23 . Molotov speech announcing ratification of non-aggression

pacts with all of Soviet Russia's neighbors except Rumania . TheFranco-Russian Treaty of Non-Aggression ratified one month later .

January 30 . Adolf Hitler becomes Chancellor of the German Govern-ment .

June 7 . In Rome the four Big Powers, France, Great Britain, Italy, andGermany sign the Quadripartite Pact of Guarantee proposed byBenito Mussolini, a reinvigoration of the Locarno Pact with thenew Germany. (The signature was ratified by all parliaments con-cerned except that of France, where the partisans of the militaryalliance with Soviet Russia succeeded in rejecting it . It never came,therefore, into force .)

July 4 . Pact of Definition of Aggression signed in London, between So-viet Russia, her neighbors, and other countries. Rumania partici-pating, Pact contrived by Titulescu, pretending to substitute it forthe Pact of Non-Aggression that had not been signed in Riga be-cause of Soviet Russia's insolent pretensions concerning Rumania'sterritory.

July 10. A National Peasant Government begins what will become thefirst Calinescu terror against the Legionary Movement .

October 10 . Franklin Delano Roosevelt's letter to Mikhail Kalinin, pro-posing the establishment of diplomatic relations between the UnitedStates and the Soviet Union .

November 13 . Interview between Hitler and Lipski. Hitler tells Lipski :"Any war could bring Communism to Europe. Poland is at the fore-front of the fight against Asia . Poland's destruction would be there-fore a universal misfortune . . . . The other European governmentsought to recognize Poland's position ."

November 14 . Liberal Party leader Ion Duca forms a cabinet .November 16. Roosevelt recognizes the Soviet Government as the legit-

imate Government of Russia .December 10. In order to prevent the Legionary Movement from par-

ticipating in the electoral campaign, Ion Duca, the Prime Minister,under the pressure of his French sponsors and of Titulescu, dis-solves for the third time the Legionary Movement and starts thebiggest period of terror the Movement has undergone until then .More than 20,000 Legionaries are arrested, Legionaries are assas-sinated by Duca's police . Hundreds are tortured and beaten . Awave of indignation and horror sweeps the country .

Analytical Chronology / xxxix

December 20 . The Duca Government wins at the polls.December 29. Duca murdered by three Legionaries who surrender im-

mediately to the police

1934January 26 . A ten-year pact of non-aggression between Germany and

Poland .February 9. The Balkan Pact between Yugoslavia, Greece, Turkey, and

Rumania. Without any significance for Rumania which is not aBalkan country. Another of Titulescu's inventions to calm appre-hensions provoked in Rumania by his pro-Soviet policy and hisanti-Polish attitude.

April 4 . The military court, before which Codreanu and all the Legion-ary leaders have been arraigned, discharges them all and condemnsonly the three murderers of Duca to hard labor for life .

June 9. A Titulescu triumph: Resumption of diplomatic relations be-tween Rumania and Soviet Russia .

August 2 . Feldmarschall Paul von Hindenburg's death . Hitler nowFiihrer, Chancellor, and Commander-in-Chief of the Reichswehr.

August 19 . Plebiscite approves (88 per cent) Hitler's assumption of fullpower.

September 13 . Poland denounces the Minorities Agreement, which wasa part of the political and territorial status established at Versaillesand guaranteed by the Covenant of the League of Nations . Ger-many, directly interested, prefers not to protest .

October 9 . King Alexander of Yugoslavia and French Foreign MinisterJean Barthou are assassinated in Marsailles on their way to Paris .

October 22 . General Hermann Goring, talking in the name of Hitler,sets forth for the first time to Petrescu-Comnen, our Envoy in Ber-lin, Germany's offer to Rumania : A guarantee of all our frontiers,those with Soviet Russia and Hungary included, complete rearma-ment with the most modern weapons for our military forces . Ger-many does not ask Rumania to abandon any of her alliances . Theonly thing Germany asks in exchange is a pledge to oppose anyattempt of the Soviet troops to cross our territory. Titulescu,Rumania's Foreign Minister, who had already promised his Frenchand Czecho-Slovak friends to let the Soviet troops cross Rumania'sterritory, in case of a European conflict, conceals Petrescu-Comnen'sreport, intending to keep our Foreign Office and our Governmentin ignorance of it until the moment he could make it impossible,by a fait accompli on the diplomatic field, for Rumania even toconsider the German proposals .

November 20 . Informed by this author, of Titulescu's treachery,

xl / Analytical Chronology

Gheorghe Bratianu, chief of the Liberal Dissident Party, goes toBerlin and has an interview with Goring . Goring repeats Germany'soffer insisting upon the fact that Rumania is not asked to abandonany of its alliances . Germany's desire, of having the assurance thatSoviet troops could not attack her through Rumanian territory,was so earnest that those proposals will be repeated again and again,by Hitler and by Goring, to our Envoy in Berlin and to Rumanianstatesmen until the very eve of World War II . It will be a lastRumanian rebuff that will force Hitler to change, momentarily,his attitude towards Soviet Russia and bring about the Ribbentrop-Molotov Agreement.

1935January 13 . Plebiscite in the Saar Basin, supervised by the League of

Nations. Ninety percent of the electors vote for union with Ger-many. Ten percent vote for union with France .

January 24 . Interview between Hitler and Lipski . J6zef Lipski, thePolish Ambassador in Berlin, reports to J6zef Beck, the PolishForeign Minister: "The Chancellor talked lengthily about the Rus-sian question . According to him the moment would come whenPoland and Germany will both be forced to defend themselvesagainst Soviet aggression . In his opinion the policy of the formerGerman Governments and of the Reichswehr to play Russia againstPoland was the greatest possible political mistake ."

February 8. Agreement between the Soviet Union and Rumania con-cerning re-establishment of direct rail communications .

February 10. Note of Count Jean Szembeck, Polish Undersecretary forForeign Affairs, for Beck's information: "Mr. Lipski told me thatGoring was very frank with him in his conversation at Bialystokand in Warsaw. Talking to the generals he developed great plansfor the future, suggesting almost a German-Polish alliance againstSoviet Russia ."

May 2 . Signing of the Franco-Soviet Pact of Mutual Assistance, ob-viously directed against Germany .

May 16. Signing of the Czecho-Soviet Pact of Mutual Assistance . Boththis and the Franco-Soviet Pact would not mean anything forFrance and Czecho-Slovakia if Rumania's consent to let Soviettroops pass across her territory were not secretly implicit in the re-suming of diplomatic relations and railway and road communicationsbetween Rumania and Soviet Russia.

May 23 . Lipski's report to Beck : "Later Hitler amplified his policytowards Poland . . . . Even before coming to power he tried toconvince General Schleicher to have no relations with the Soviets .

Analytical Chronology / x1i

. . . Hitler said that the Reichswehr considered Soviet Russia asa danger only for Poland and not for Germany . This was a policyof shortsighted people ."

October 3 . Italian troops enter Ethiopia .October 7 . Titulescu orders Petrescu-Comnen to declare to the German

Foreign Office that our geographical position forces Rumania totake into consideration the implications in Russia's vicinity . Incertain circumstances, therefore, Rumania could be brought tosign also a pact of mutual assistance with Soviet Russia, like Franceand Czecho-Slovakia

1936January 29 . King Carol in London on the occasion of the funeral of

King George V. Very cold reception . Queen Mary refuses to see him .February 24 . Following Titulescu's orders, additional provocative decla-

rations by Petrescu-Comnen at the Auswartige Amt .February 27 . The French Parliament ratifies the Franco-Soviet military

alliance .March 7 . The ambassadors of the signatories to the Locarno Treaties

convoked at the Auswartige Amt by Baron Konstantin von Neurath,who informs them that Germany considers the Treaties have beenviolated by France, through the conclusion of a military alliancewith Soviet Russia, obviously directed against Germany . Conse-quently Germany will reoccupy the demilitarized territory alongthe Rhine. At the same time Germany offers to sign a pact of non-aggression with France and Belgium, to sign an Air Force Conven-tion with all the Western Powers, and to reenter the League of Na-tions if it should be admitted that its Charter is independent of thestipulations of the Versailles Treaty . None of these proposals wastaken into consideration by the Western Powers .

Night of March 7 to March 8 . In Rumania, the Liberal Governmentorders the Rumanian Railways to group as much rolling stock aspossible at the Rumano-Russian frontier, which meant obviously toput this stock at the disposition of the Soviet Command in case thereoccupation of the Rhineland would provoke World War II .(The gauge of the Rumanian rails is narrower than the gauge ofthe Russian rails .)

March 8 . Informed about this fateful measure Corneliu Codreanu, theleader of the Legionary Movement and General Cantacuzene, thesecond in command, decide that the Movement will oppose by forceany attempt of the Soviet forces to cross Rumanian territory .Preparatory measures are immediately taken .

March 12-18. Britain's, Italy's, and Belgium's declarations in Paris and

xlii / Analytical Chronology

in London at the Council of the League of Nations make Franceto understand that even if the reoccupation of the Rhineland byGermany must be considered as a violation of the Versailles Treatyit will not be considered as a casus foederis or a casus belli by anyof the cosignatories of the Versailles Treaty or of the Locarno Pact .

May 30 . Codreanu issues a proclamation concerning Titulescu's machin-ations and any attempt of alliance with Soviet Russia : "It will bean act of treason against God, against Rumania and against themoral order of this world ."

August 14 . Count Jean Szembeck reports his conversation with Joachimvon Ribbentrop : "Ribbentrop insisted upon the necessity of Ger-man-Polish collaboration. Both Poland and Germany are underthe threat of a very great danger . . . . Bolshevism intends to de-stroy all the fruits of Western Civilization . . . . The Chancellor[Hitler] could not consent to any compromise in his relations withSoviet Russia . . . . He is himself convinced of this necessity [ofGerman-Polish collaboration] and is one of the most ardent advo-cates of the idea of such a rapprochement ."

August 29 . Rumanian Foreign Minister Titulescu dismissed by KingCarol. Titulescu's policy remains however fundamentally the policyCarol has decided to follow.

PART III

November 5 . Codreanu's Memorandum addressed to the King andRumania's political leaders, concerning Rumania's foreign policy .The Little Entente and the Balkan Alliance have absolutely nopractical value for Rumania . They will both crumble to pieces atthe moment of any European conflict . The whole of the Rumanianpeople will rise and oppose those who prepare Rumania's deathby trying to associate her with the Soviets in case of a general con-flagration.

November 13 . German Military Attache in Bucharest, Colonel Schunke,visits Petrescu-Comnen. He renews Germany's offer to Rumania .Insists again upon the fact that Germany does not expect us toabandon any of our alliances . All that is asked from us is ourpromise to oppose any Soviet attempt to cross our territory . IfBucharest continues to reject Germany's friendship, Germany maybe forced to look for friends in other directions .

November 16 . Second visit to Berlin of Gheorghe Bratianu, chief ofthe Liberal Dissident Party . Interview with Hitler and with Goring .Both insist upon the necessity for Germany to be assured that noSoviet attack could come through Rumanian territory without

Analytical Chronology / xliii

opposition from Rumania. Both renew their proposal to arm ourforces with the most modern equipment. We are not asked to aban-don any of our alliances .

November 24. A group of Legionaries leaves for the Spanish Civil War .Join Franco's troops .

1937February 13 . Funerals in Bucharest of the Legionaries killed in the

Spanish Civil War fighting on the side of the Nationalists . Im-pressive manifestations of sympathy on the part of 300,000 whofollow the cortege .

February 16 . Goring's friendly declarations to Marshal Edward Smigly-Rydz in Warsaw. Poland and Germany equally menaced . Necessityto adjust their policy .

February 20 . New interview : Goring-Petrescu . Goring renews offer ofguarantee of all our frontiers and of rearmament. One conditiononly: That we promise to defend our frontiers against any Soviet at-tempt. Petrescu-Comnen answers that he is not allowed to discusspolitics but only economic questions . Goring tells him that he isinvited by Hitler who wishes to confirm personally Germany's pro-posals . Petrescu never responds to this invitation .

February 29 . New measures of suppression against the Legionary Move-ment. Codreanu's proclamation : "The Legionary Movement willnever resort to violence and conspiracy. It will not answer to thesenew provocations. Our victory will come with an inner transforma-tion in the soul of every Rumanian . We refuse to soil this victorywith plots and violence ."

March 20. Last interview between Goring and Petrescu . The formerrenews Germany's offer and promises to arm our forces with themost modern and even the most secret equipment. Only one con-dition: that we pledge to defend our frontiers . Petrescu declares inthe name of his Government that Rumania will never enter intoan agreement which might bring her into difficulties with theSoviets .

June 12 . Execution of Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevski in Moscow . Dur-ing a visit to London and Paris, Tukhachevski committed the im-prudence of confiding to some military people his plans for a coupagainst the Communist regime . Moscow was immediately informed .

November 30 . New proclamation of Codreanu about Rumania's foreignpolicy : "I am against the policy of the great Western democracies.I am against the Little Entente and the Balkan Alliance. I havenot the slightest confidence in the League of Nations . I am withthe countries of the National Revolution . Forty-eight hours after

xliv / Analytical Chronology

the victory of the Legionary Movement, Rumania will be allied toRome and Berlin, thus entering the line of its historical world-mission-the defense of the Cross, of Christian culture and civiliza-tion."

November-December. Kidnaping in the streets of Paris and assassina-tion in Moscow of General Kutiepov, chief of the former National-ist Russian Army in exile .

December 21 . Legionary triumph at the parliamentary elections. Sixty-six seats in Parliament .

December 28. King Carol appoints Octavian Goga Prime Minister.Goga and Armand Calinescu, as Minister of the Interior, form aNational Christian Government . Goga's National Christian Partywas an insignificant extremist right group which received only9.15 percent of the vote in the last election .

1938December 1937-January . General Miller, Kutiepov's successor, is kid-

napped in the streets of Paris and assassinated in Moscow .February 6 . Beginning of the new electoral campaign in Rumania in

an atmosphere of terror and murder .February 9 . Goga, profoundly affected by the turn the electoral cam-

paign has taken under Calinescu, comes to an agreement withCodreanu .

February 10. King Carol, informed of this agreement, dismisses Goga .February 12 . Carol's coup d'etat . Suppression of the Constitution . Sup-

pression of political parties . Patriarch Miron Cristea, Prime Minister.Armand Calinescu, Minister of the Interior. New Constitutionplaces all powers, even the judiciary, in Carol's hands .

February 21 . Codreanu's proclamation announcing the dissolution ofthe Movement : "We will not answer the Government provocations .We will not transform Rumania into another Spain ." He announceshis decision to leave Rumania for a couple of years and settle inItaly.

March 5 . The Government orders the dismissal of every Legionary fromevery state office and from every private enterprise . All Legionaryestablishments, commercial and industrial, are closed . The greatestanti-Legionary terror known until then begins with thousands ofarrests .

April 7 . Codreanu arrested . He will never be free again .April 19 . Codreanu sentenced to six months in prison for having "of-

fended" Professor Iorga .April 22 . Trouble in the Sudetenland. Beginning of the Czecho-Slovak

crisis .

Analytical Chronology / x1vMay 27. In one of the most monstrous judiciary crimes, with Professor

lorga's collaboration and complicity, Corneliu Codreanu is sen-tenced to ten years at hard labor. This meant also, as everybodyguessed, his death .

September 13 . Open insurrection in the Sudetenland . Martial law isproclaimed.

September 15 . First meeting between Neville Chamberlain and AdolfHitler at Berchtesgaden .

September 22-23 . Second Chamberlain-Hitler meeting at Godesberg andgeneral mobilization in Czecho-Slovakia .

September 29-September 30 . Munich Agreement . Over three and a halfmillion Germans allowed to live free .

September 30 . Chamberlain speaks to the crowd from the window ofNo. 10 Downing Street : "My good friends, this is the second timein our history that there has come back from Germany to DowningStreet peace with honor . I believe it is peace for our time . Wethank you from the bottom of our hearts . And now I recommendyou to go home and sleep quietly in your beds."

October 13. To everybody's amazement, the first of Chamberlain's war-like speeches in the Commons : "The Munich Agreement does notpermit us to diminish our efforts towards the realization of ourmilitary program ."

October 24 . Friendly interview in Berchtesgaden between Ribbentropand Lipski, the Polish Ambassador . Invitation to Polish ForeignMinister Beck to visit Berlin : "A standing invitation to our Polishfriends." Ribbentrop's suggestions are : 1) Danzig a German city ;2) Free port for Poland in Danzig with communications assured byextraterritorial railway and highway through Danzig ; 3) Extraterri-torial zone one kilometer wide for a railroad and highway acrossthe Polish Corridor uniting the two portions of Germany carvedout at Versailles ; 4) Both nations recognize and guarantee theirfrontiers ; 5) An extension of the German-Polish treaty of friendship,complete with a consultative clause, by from ten to twenty years .(These proposals were standing and open from Germany's sideuntil August 10, 1939, when Poland rejected them and declaredthat "any intervention by the Reich Government [would be re-garded] as an act of aggression ."

October 31 . Polish Foreign Minister Beck instructs Lipski on how toreply to Ribbentrop's proposals on Danzig and the Corridor . Answerentirely negative .

November 7 . On the eve of Ribbentrop's visit to Paris, Hershel Gryn-szpan, a seventeen-year-old Jewish refugee, assassinates Ernst vomRath, Third Secretary of the German Embassy in Paris.

xlvi / Analytical Chronology

November 13 . King Carol receives an unexpected invitation from theBritish Government to visit London.

November 14 . President Roosevelt recalls Hugh Wilson, the AmericanAmbassador in Berlin .

November 19 . Lipski confers with Ribbentrop in Berlin . He informsthe German Foreign Minister that "any tendency to incorporatethe Free City in the Reich must inevitably lead to conflict ." How-ever, Poland would be willing to replace the League of Nations'guarantee of Danzig with a German-Polish agreement . Ribbentropasks the Polish Government to think about the German proposalsin terms of centuries and of a permanent friendship between thetwo countries .

November 22-28 . Clandestine publishing and diffusion of a series ofLegionary manifests concerning the question of Rumano-Soviet re-lations. Student trouble at the University of Cluj .

November 28 . Carol's return from London . In Paris, according to Paul-Boncour's memoirs, Carol promises to come to an understandingwith Soviet Russia about the passage of Soviet troops across Ru-manian territory in case of a European conflict . He asks, however,for a necessary respite in order to prepare Rumania's publicopinion .

November 29-30 . By order of King Carol, Codreanu and thirteen of hisfollowers are garotted . Beginning of the promised "preparation."

December 6 . Declaration of non-aggression and friendship betweenFrance and Germany. Mutual guarantee of common frontiers .

1939January 5 . Beck confers with Hitler at Berchtesgaden . In regard to

Danzig, Hitler declares that he is thinking about a formula thatwould make it politically German and economically Polish. He isready to give formal and clear guarantee for the German-Polishfrontiers. (A strong Poland was absolutely necessary for Germany .Any Polish division in front of Soviet Russia was as good as a Ger-man division .)

January 6 . Beck confers with Ribbentrop at Munich . Ribbentrop asksthe "reunion of Danzig with Germany" and proposes to guarantee"in the most generous manner" Polish economic interests . Ribben-trop also proposes that if Poland would agree to a German "extra-territorial motor road and railway across the Corridor," Germanywould "guarantee the Corridor and all Poland's present positions ."

January 23 . Chamberlain's new war speech . Announcing the introduc-tion of the National Service : "It is a project that must make usprepared for war ."

Analytical Chronology / xlvii

January 25 . New arrests, assassinations and tortures of Legionaries inRumania, in connection with the discovery of a "Legionary con-spiracy." The young Lucia Grecu, having been savagely tortured,is killed by jumping from the third floor of the Police Prefecture inBucharest when she feels she can resist her tormentors no longer .

January 25-27 . Ribbentrop in Warsaw. Renews Germany's proposals :Danzig politically German, economically fully Polish. Extraterri-torial railway and highway connection, of one kilometer width,between the two Germanies . Same extraterritorial connections forPoland through Danzig territory towards her free port in Danzig .Reciprocal guarantee of frontiers. Sincere and earnest desire ofHitler to achieve with Poland, permanent friendship by "an appro-priate working agreement ."

January 28 . Chamberlain's speech in Birmingham . Great Britain mustprepare herself to defend not only her territory but also "theprinciple of liberty."

February 8. Six Legionaries arrested in Bucharest and immediately mur-dered by Armand Calinescu's police .

February 22 . Chamberlain's speech in Blackburn : "Ships, guns and am-munition are produced by our shipyards and factories with an in-creased acceleration . . . . Even if the whole world be against uswe will win." All of these provocative demonstrations on GreatBritain's side (there were also the speeches of Churchill, Eden, DuffCooper, etc.) went on while Berlin reiterated incessantly its gen-erous and friendly proposals to Poland .

March 6. Armand Calinescu becomes Prime Minister on the death ofPatriarch Cristea .

March 14 . Monsignor Josef Tiso proclaims the independence of hiscountry, Slovakia . (After General Stefanik's murder, the PittsburghAgreement between Czechs and Slovaks, promising autonomy to thelatter, was torn to pieces by Bene"s . Monsignor Tiso was kept in prisonfor years by the Prague Government.)

March 15 . German troops enter Prague . Bohemia a German protecto-rate. Contrary to the still prevailing information, it was not thisGerman move that provoked the abandonment by the WesternPowers of their peace-minded Munich attitude, but the other wayaround .

March 15 . From Count Ciano's Diaries : " . . . German troops begantheir occupation of Bohemia . . . . It is useless to deny that allthis concerns and humiliates the Italian people. It is necessary togive them a satisfaction and compensation : Albania ."

March 21 . Sir Howard Kennard, the British Ambassador in Warsaw,offers Poland, in the name of his Government, a Pact of Consulta-

xlviii / Analytical Chronologytion and Resistance to include Great Britain, France, Poland, andthe Soviet Union .

March 24 . The German Ambassador in Warsaw tells of great activitybetween the Polish Foreign Office and the British Embassy . Miro-slav Arciczewski, the Polish Undersecretary of State, complains tothe German Ambassador about British and French intrigues inWarsaw, that do not take into consideration the dangers to whichPoland is exposed .

March 26. Ambassador Lipski brings to Ribbentrop Poland's answer toGermany's proposals of October 1938 . Poland rejects them totally .Beck will not go to Berlin in answer to Hitler's invitation and inexchange for Ribbentrop's visit to Warsaw, so long as Germanywill not abandon explicitly the idea of a German Danzig and of anextraterritorial strip of 1,000 meter width across the Polish Corri-dor. Should Germany insist, it would mean war .

March 31 . Chamberlain announces in the House of Commons that theBritish Government considers itself bound to come immediately toPoland's aid the moment the Polish Government feels that it is toits interest to resist any action, that in its estimation, would putPoland's existence in danger . The unconditional guarantee givento Poland, by France, and Great Britain, which later will be givento Rumania, concerns only the western borders of the country, notthe frontiers with Soviet Russia . A detail to which the governments

Oof Poland and Rumania gave no great importance .April 6. Italian ultimatum to King Zogu I of Albania .April 7 . Italian occupation of Albania.April 13 . Paris and London inform Bucharest that in answering King

Carol's demand they guarantee Rumania's western borders. Asopposed to Germany's offer (which will be repeated once more)these guarantees leave us open to Soviet aggression ; they constitutedsomehow an invitation to such an aggression .

April 18 . Grigore Gafencu, new Minister of Foreign Affairs of Rumania,invited to Berlin . Before contemplating a fateful change of policytowards Soviet Russia, Hitler decides to renew once more his offerto guarantee the borders and to rearm Rumania's forces . BothHitler and Goring warn Gafencu that "Rumania will be abandonedto the covetousness of her neighbors," if she persists in her hostilepolicy towards Germany. (In Paris and London Gafencu receivesinstructions and gives assurances to the respective governments . InRome he tries to persuade Ciano to join the Western Powers .)

July 10 . Niculeta Nicolescu, head of the Legionary Women's Organiza-tion, arrested by Calinescu's police seeking information regarding

Analytical Chronology / xlix

an alleged Legionary conspiracy . She is tortured and violated . Afterher breasts are cut off, she is put to death .

July 12 . Chamberlain's fateful declarations in the House of Commonswhich deprive him and his Government of any possibility of beingan impartial arbiter, or even an intermediary, between Germanyand Poland in the Danzig question . Fully adopting Poland's in-transigent attitude he states that : "The present status of Danzigcould not be considered as illegal or unjust . . . . We hope that theFree City will prove once more that different nationalities cancollaborate when their interest demands it ."

August 4 . Upon uncontrolled and mistaken information the PolishGovernment sends a wanton ultimatum to the Danzig Senate .

August 9. Germany warns Poland that any further comminatory notesto Danzig will result in strained Polish-German relations with Po-land being responsible .

August 10 . In a strongly worded note the Polish Government warnsGermany that "any future intervention by the latter to the detri-ment of Polish rights and interests at Danzig would be consideredas an act of aggression ."

On or about August 12. Fabricius, the German Envoy in Bucharest,phoned Gheorghe Bratianu that he had been instructed by MarshalGoring to ask him to try once more to convince King Carol and hisGovernment of the necessity to give without delay to Germany theguarantee that Rumania will not permit Soviet troops to pass a&ossher territory . If this guarantee were not given there would be achange in Germany's foreign policy very detrimental to Rumania'sinterests. The warning was transmitted . Carol and his ministers didnot pay it any attention .

August 15 . German State Secretary Baron Ernst von Weizsacker warnsSir Nevile Henderson, the British Ambassador in Berlin, that thesituation is extremely serious . Sir Nevile suggests a new Germaninitiative in Warsaw. Weizsacker answers that a German initiativeis unthinkable in view of Beck's speech declaring that Poland wasprepared to talk only if Germany would first accept the principlehe had laid down ; in view of the senseless ultimatum to the DanzigSenate and in view of the comminatory note of August 10 to theGerman Government. The same warning was repeated three dayslater from the same quarter to the British and the French Ambassa-dors .

August 19 . Trade and credit agreement between Germany and the SovietUnion .

August 22 . Chamberlain's letter to Hitler :

1 / Analytical Chronology

"Your Excellency will have already heard of certain measurestaken by His Majesty's Government, and announced in the pressand on the wireless this evening .

"These steps have, in the opinion of His Majesty's Government,been rendered necessary by the military movements which havebeen reported from Germany, and by the fact that apparently theannouncement of a German-Soviet Agreement is taken in somequarters in Berlin to indicate that intervention by Great Britainon behalf of Poland is no longer a contingency that need be reck-oned with. No greater mistake could be made . Whatever may proveto be the nature of the German-Soviet Agreement, it cannot alterGreat Britain's obligation to Poland which His Majesty's Govern-ment has stated in public repeatedly and plainly, and which theyare determined to fulfill . . . .

August 23 . Hitler's reply to Chamberlain :" . . . Germany was prepared to settle the questions of Danzig

and of the Corridor by the method of negotiation on the basis oftruly unparalleled magnanimity. The allegations disseminated byEngland regarding a German mobilization against Poland, the as-sertion of aggressive designs towards Rumania, Hungary, etc ., aswell as the so-called guarantee declarations which were subsequentlygiven had, however, dispelled Polish inclination to negotiate on abasis of this kind which would have been tolerable for Germanyalso .

11 *. . The German Reich Government has received information

to the effect that the British Government has the intention tocarry out measures of mobilization which, according to the state-ments contained in your own letter, are clearly directed againstGermany alone . . . . I therefore inform your Excellency that, inthe event of these military announcements being carried into effect,I shall order immediate mobilization of the German forces ."

August 23 . Ribbentrop-Molotov Agreement of Non-aggression and Eco-nomic Collaboration for ten years . The British and French SpecialMilitary Missions leave Moscow .

August 24 . Anglo-Polish Military Agreement .August 25 . Suicide of Colonel Slawek with two bullets in his body .

Slawek was a stubborn and influential partisan of Pilsudski's policytowards Germany.

August 25 . Hitler-Henderson meeting. The British Ambassador reportsHitler's declarations : "Poland's provocations have become intol-erable. He has decided to put an end to these macedonian situa-tions. But he has no intention of being small-minded in an arrange-ment with Poland. Nor has he the intention of asking Great Britain

Analytical Chronology / li

to break her commitments with Warsaw ." Hitler makes new propos-als to Great Britain whose friendship he has always sought . Hitlerasks Sir Nevile to leave the same day for London with his proposals .

August 27 . Birger Dahlerus, a Swedish businessman and friend ofGoring, who had seen Hitler the day before, lands in Croyden inGoring's personal aircraft and hands Lord Halifax Hitler's proposalsfor a peaceful conclusion of the Danzig and Corridor affairs . Theseproposals are substantially the same as those which will be pro-posed by Germany August 30 .

August 28. Henderson back from London. Chamberlain asks precisionsconcerning Hitler's intentions towards Poland .

August 29 . Hitler's answer is affirmative on all counts . Renews hisfriendly sentiments and intentions towards the British Empire ."Germany has never intended to endanger Poland's vital interests ."Germany accepts Britain's offer to intervene for the presence inBerlin of a Polish plenipotentiary. Sir Nevile asks if this diplomatwould be assured of a courteous reception and if negotiations wouldbe conducted on a basis of perfect equality. Hitler answers, "Ofcoursel" Henderson observes that the short term of thirty-six hoursseemed like an ultimatum . Hitler and Ribbentrop observe that itwas not an ultimatum at all, but had the purpose of stressing theurgency of a situation where two armies completely mobilized wereconfronting each other. What Hitler and Ribbentrop could nottell Henderson was their anxiety about the precarious situation onthe Western Front where five German divisions manned the Sieg-fried Line in front of the whole French Army and possibly quickly-transported British reinforcements .

August 30 . Upon Britain's insistence Germany agrees to an extensionof twenty-four hours to permit a Polish negotiator, who naturallymight have been Lipski, to present himself at the Wilhelmstrasse .At midnight Sir Nevile Henderson hears Germany's proposals fora basis of negotiations; early next morning Goring sends Hender-son the full text. "Those proposals are in general not too unrea-sonable," says Sir Nevile in his Final Report . Pierre and ReneeGosset in their rabid anti-German book Hitler declare : "It was aproposal of extreme moderation . It was in fact an offer that noAllied statesman could have rejected in good faith ." They, how-ever, rejected it. Why?

August 31 . Henderson informs Lipski of neither the first term (August30, Midnight) nor the second (August 31, Midnight). Instead ofstressing the deadly necessity of seeing the German Foreign Minis-ter before midnight the 31st, he dissuades him from doing itat all. In his Final Report : "I suggested that he recommend to

Iii / Analytical Chronology

his Government an interview between Marshal Smigly-Rydz andGoring. I felt obliged to add that I could not conceive of the suc-cess of any negotiations if they were conducted by Herr v . Rib-bentrop." Henderson is aware that this dilatory recommendationmeans war. In fact he recognizes it implicitly in the same FinalReport .

August 31 . From a telegram of Lipski to Beck : "Mr. Coulondre, theFrench Ambassador, has told me that Nevile Henderson hasbeen informed through German contacts, that the German Govern-ment had the intention of waiting until midnight August 31st .Coulondre advises me to inform the German Government, onlyafter midnight, that the Polish Embassy was always at its reach ."Coulondre, it seems, was no more eager than Henderson to see afruitful meeting between Ribbentrop and Lipski . This meeting, onthe other hand, had been condemned days ago to a tragic endbecause of the orders sent to Lipski by the Polish Government .

August 31 . From the telegram of Sir Howard Kennard, British Ambas-sador in Warsaw, to Lord Halifax, received in London at 7:30 a.m . :"I have asked Mr. Beck what would be the attitude of the PolishAmbassador in Berlin if Herr v. Ribbentrop will communicate tohim the German proposals . He answered that Lipski has been for-bidden to receive such a document ."

August 31 . Telegram to Beck from Lipski who days before has beenstrictly forbidden to accept any written proposals from Ribbentropor anybody's hands, even if it were only for reading them : "I havebeen received by Mr. v. Ribbentrop at 6 :30 p.m. I have obeyedinstructions received and told him that I was not empowered tonegotiate. Mr. v. Ribbentrop repeated that he believed I had suchpowers. He told me that he would report my visit to the Chancel-lor."

September 1 . Hostilities begin between Germany and Poland . FromSir Nevile Henderson's Final Report: "The Wehrmacht asked YESor NO, as the success of its plan depended largely on the rapidoccupation of Poland, and on the conclusion as rapidly as possibleof the operations on the Eastern Front. Bad weather could startat any moment and was one of the best defenses of Poland againstthe German Army which was almost entirely motorized . However,because of Hitler's hesitation, one week had already been lost ."Each day increased the possibility of a Franco-British attack onthe Western Front, an attack that never took place despite theFranco-British guarantees given to Poland.

September 1 . Danger of peacel Mussolini's proposals : Suspension ofhostilities, immediate convening of a Conference of the Big Powers,

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Poland included, to discuss terms for a peaceful agreement. Im-mediate acceptance of Mussolini's proposals by Germany, France,and Poland. Categorical British rejection, asking withdrawal ofthe German troops from the part of Polish territory (thirty kilo-meters deep) which they had already occupied . Remarkable fact :The British Government does not consult Warsaw before takingthis fateful decision . Acceptance by London of the Italian propos-als would have spared Poland the Soviet onslaught .

September 2 . Coulondre's telegram to Daladier : "Stay firm, Hitler willknuckle under [se degon flera] ." Intrigues of Reynaud, Mandel,and Leger ; pressure by Great Britain . Subordination of Daladierto the Anonymous Forces . France revokes her acceptance of theproposals of Mussolini which would have saved Poland and herindependence and spared the world World War II . Count de Saint-Aulaire's predictions, made eight years before, come true : "Col-lective security, indivisible peace . . . this means simply a pro-Soviet crusade in the event of a German-Russian conflict ."

September 3 . Great Britain and France declare war on Germany.September 4 . Goring's speech. A last effort, with Hitler's consent, to

reach a settlement with Poland . This speech backed by Hitler'smeaningful visit to Pilsudski's grave countered by fiery British,French, and American pressures in Warsaw . (No historian of thosefateful days has, to our knowledge, ever mentioned this fact .)

September 6 . The German Command asks the Polish Command toevacuate the non-combatants, especially women and children, incase it intends to defend Warsaw. Poland's answer : "Warsaw willbe defended, nobody will be evacuated."

September 17. The Red Army invades Poland .September 21 . Execution of Armand Cilinescu, the murderer of Cor-

neliu Codreanu and of so many Legionaries, young men and girls,by a group of nine Legionaries. They give themselves up immedi-ately at the first police precinct. They are immediately executedafter routine torture, their bodies left for days where they hadfallen .

September 21-22 . Massacre of four hundred Legionaries. Their bodiesleft at the country's crossroads for several days .

September 27 . After a prolonged bombardment Warsaw is taken . TheWestern Powers neither break their diplomatic relations withMoscow nor declare war on her . FINIS POLONIAE! (When Gen-eral Kazimierz Sosnkowski, Supreme Commander of the Polishtroops fighting on the Western Front in 1944, reminded his sol-diers that "Poland entered this war four years earlier because ofthe urging of Great Britain" at Churchill's insistence Sosnkowski

liv / Analytical Chronology

was deprived of his command for having recalled what had to beforgotten .)

September 28. Germany and Soviet Union divide Poland .October 6 . Hitler's peace offer rejected by France and Great Britain .November 30 . The Red Army attacks Finland. The Western Powers do

not react. Later Churchill will declare war on Finland .December 14 . Soviet Russia expelled from a defunct League of Nations .

The Western Powers maintain their diplomatic relations withRussia.

1940March-April . Massacre in Katyn and in the Arctic of 15,000 young

Polish officers . Fitting preface to Teheran and Yalta.April 9 . German invasion of Norway, beating the Franco-British inva-

sion by twelve hours . Naval battle of Narvik.May 6 . Horia Sima, the young Legionary leader, leaves Berlin with a

group of comrades and secretly enters Rumania .May 11 . Great Britain starts indiscriminate bombing of civilian popula-

tion, a purely terrorist rather than a military action, a thing thathad until then not occurred in this war .

May 19 . Horia Sima is arrested . Meanwhile Carol starts negotiationswith other Legionary leaders . Carol is impressed by Germany's vic-tories. The Legionaries would like to save Horia Sima's life .

May 28-June 22 . German Blitzkrieg in the West . Armistice betweenFrance and Germany . At the Armistice ceremony, as FeldmarschallWilhelm Keitel and the French General Charles Huntziger faceeach other with tears in their eyes, Keitel declares : "I cannot, asa soldier, let this occasion pass by without expressing to you mysympathy for the sad moments you have experienced as a French-man. You can be comforted however by knowing, as I state it hereexpressly, that your soldiers have fought with their usual gallantry ."Both soldiers exchanged a long handshake . Six years later in similarcircumstances Feldmarschall Keitel was hanged in Nurnberg .

May-June . German military authorities warn the Rumanian MilitaryAttache in Berlin of Soviet Russia's military preparations at ourfrontiers. Grigore Gafencu, the Rumanian Foreign Minister, refusesto believe the warnings of Colonel Vorobchievici and accuses him ofalarmism .

June 1 . After eighteen months as Foreign Minister, Gafencu resigns .June 10. Mussolini declares war on already-defeated France and on

Great Britain .June 13 . Horia Sima liberated . Audience with the King .

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June 25. A new Government in Bucharest . Some Legionaries partic-ipating as undersecretaries in secondary departments .

June 26. Soviet ultimatum. Rumania to start evacuation of Bessarabiaimmediately and to terminate in four days . Carol complies.

July 3 . In consideration of the new dangers at the Rumanian frontiers,Horia Sima consents to participate in a new Government .

July 7 . Realizing that Carol's attitude, in front of these new dangers,will be as cowardly as in the Bessarabian affair, Horia Sima re-signs .

July 27 . Gafencu appointed Rumanian Envoy to Moscow .August 3 . Horia Sima with Legionary leaders in audience with Carol .

Sima states that only a Legionary Government can save Rumaniafrom new territorial mutilation and asks for full responsibility .No understanding is reached .

August 29-30 . Arbitration of Vienna . The work of the anti-RumanianCiano. Half of Rumanian Transylvania given to Hungary. Mean-while a part of the Dobruja province has been retroceded toBulgaria .

PART IV

September 1 . Horia Sima broadcasts a manifest demanding Carol'sabdication .

September 3 . At 9 p.m. the Legionary Revolution breaks out . Fightingin Bucharest, Brasov, Constanta . The army does not react withconviction. Nine Legionaries killed. The public buildings are oc-cupied. The Palace is surrounded . General Coroama, Commanderof the Bucharest Army Corps, refuses to order his soldiers to fireupon Legionaries .

September 5-6 . Triumph of the Legionary Revolution . King Carolabdicates in favor of his son Michael and leaves Rumania .

September 14 . Formal understanding between the Legionary Movementand General Antonescu, sanctioned by King Michael . Proclama-tion of the National Legionary State . Formation of the NationalLegionary Government: General Ion Antonescu, President (Con-ductorul Statului-the Head of State); Horia Sima, Vice Presidentand Commandant of the Legionary Movement; Prince MichelSturdza, Minister of Foreign Affairs ; General Petrovicescu, Min-ister of the Interior; General Pantazi, Minister of Defense ; MihaiAntonescu, Minister of Justice ; Vasile Iasinschi, Minister of Healthand Labor ; Professor Braileanu, Minister of Public Education ;Gheorghe Cretzianu, Minister of Finance ; Ion Protopopescu, Min-

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ister of Public Works; Cancicov, Minister of Industry and Com-merce.

November 14. Rumania being absolutely deprived of armored defenseand under the constant menace of the Red Army, the NationalLegionary Government asks Germany for two tank units . They areimmediately sent with the necessary instructors in order to trainRumanian crews. Thanks to the squandering of government fundsby Carol and his Governments, these few tanks will be the onlymodern weapons with which Rumania will enter World War II .Mussolini protests, and suggests that Rumania also ask for thepresence of Italian troops. His wish cannot be granted .

(October 28. Obsessed by the idea of doing no less than Hitler andconsidering that Rumania has been "occupied" by Germany, Mus-solini attacks Greece unexpectedly and without any visible reasonbut in order also to occupy something.)

November 14-16. Antonescu and Sturdza visit Rome . Courteous butstrained reception .

November 20 . Antonescu and Sturdza visit Berlin . Rumania's adhesionto the Tripartite (intended to be Quadripartite) Pact, signed byAntonescu, not by Sturdza . Antonescu leaves Berlin on November24; Sturdza six days later.

November 29. The second night in Jilava .December 15 . Antonescu-Sturdza conflict . Sturdza forced to resign .

1941January 15 . Antonescu visits Hitler in Salzburg . Hitler announces

impending war with Soviet Russia ; asks for Rumania's collabora-tion. Antonescu pretends that he must first liquidate the LegionaryMovement which is "an element of trouble," but forgets to ask formore than a promise of modern war materiel for the RumanianArmy. The condition sine qua non ought to have been the priordelivery of this materiel. All through the campaign in Russia, theRumanian troops were completely deprived of adequate materiel .

January 19 . Conflict between General Antonescu and General Petro-vicescu, the Minister of the Interior and a friend of the LegionaryMovement. Petrovicescu forced to resign .

January 21 . The district prefects, all Legionaries, called to Bucharestby Antonescu for an alleged conference . In the absence of theprefects, the colonels with the highest grade in each locality areordered to occupy and take charge of the prefectures . (It was undercolonel-prefects, during Carol's regime, that four hundred Legionar-ies were massacred.)

January 21 . Antonescu coup against his own government . Passive but

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stubborn resistance of the Legionaries . Barricaded in the buildingsthey are lawfully occupying, they fire over the soldiers' heads.Legionaries are killed . No Rumanian soldier is killed or wounded .

January 21 . Antonescu asks for Hitler's advice and help . Hitler's an-swer: "Liquidate the Movement ." The German forces in Rumaniaordered to help Antonescu crush the Movement .

Night of January 22-23 . Dr. Neubacher, the German Charge d'Affaires,is received by Sima. He is the bearer of a solemn promise fromboth Antonescu and Hitler of complete impunity for Legionaries,and suggests participation of the Movement in a new Government,if resistance ends before noon, January 23rd .

January 23 . Legionary resistance ceases in Bucharest before eight o'clockand in the provinces before eleven o'clock . Nevertheless Anto-nescu's forces start massacre of peaceful crowds on Bucharest's cen-tral avenue. According to Antonescu's official statistics there are 360dead among whom many are women and children . No Legionariesamong them ; they had already peacefully withdrawn, conformingto Horia Sima's orders .

January-June . Arrests, summary trials, condemnations, and many execu-tions of Legionaries by Antonescu, under the protection of the Ger-man forces and with the approbation of the new German Envoy,Baron Manfred von Killinger . Legionaries who succeed, with thehelp of the National Socialist Party, in reaching Germany orAustria are immediately interned by German authorities .

February 10 . Great Britain severs diplomatic relations with Rumania .March 1 . Bulgaria adheres to the Tripartite Pact. German troops begin

crossing Rumanian territory in order to help the Italian Army infull route in the Balkans.

March 27. Italy's insensate ambitions over Croatia and other Yugoslavterritories ; her unexplainable attack on Greece, and Western in-trigues in Belgrade, result in the coup of General Du"san Simovic,Chief of the Yugoslav General Staff, and the beginning of Yugoslav-German hostilities .

June 11-12 . Antonescu visits Hitler in Munich. Full agreement concern-ing the cooperation of the two armies against Soviet Russia . Prom-ise of massive armaments to Rumania. (This materiel was notdelivered until the last weeks of the war .)

June 22 . Germany, Rumania, and Finland at war with Soviet Russia .Finland's gallant army limits its operation to the recovery of herformer frontiers . Italy and Hungary join with token contingents .(Later Danish, Norwegian, Dutch, Belgian, French, and Spanishlegions of volunteers will enter the anti-Communist crusade . Thiswill be the first and perhaps the last and unique joint effort of

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defenders of Western Civilization to crush the Nameless Beastbefore being devoured by it . These volunteers attempting to opposethe Great Design of the Anonymous Powers, when back in theircountries, will everywhere, except in Spain, be sentenced to longprison terms or be executed .)

June 22 . All Legionaries in Antonescu's prisons or in German concentra-tion camps ask to be sent to the front . Their demand rejected byboth the Rumanian and German Governments.

July-November. Victorious advance of the German and Rumaniantroops on the Southern Russian Front.

July 30-31 . Harry Hopkins in Moscow .August 21 . Antonescu promotes himself to the rank of Marshal .October-December . Battle and retreat from Moscow.October 16. Odessa taken by Rumanian troops after some of the blood-

iest combat of the Eastern War . Antonescu's increasing insanitycauses him to refuse Germany's offer of heavy artillery, armoredunits, and bombers, which the Rumanian troops are totally lack-ing. These troops suffered 75,000 casualties . Four divisions had tobe sent home for reorganization and replenishment .

December 7 . Pearl Harborl "The day of infamy" that permitted Frank-lin Delano Roosevelt to trample over every solemnly repeatedpromise he had given to the mothers and wives in the UnitedStates. It gave him the opportunity to ask the United States Senateto authorize sending an expeditionary corps to Europe, an oppor-tunity he and his mentors had looked and worked for since Sep-tember 1939 . Britain declares war on Rumania .

December 12 . The German Minister Manfred von Killinger and theItalian Minister Bova Scoppa force Mihai Antonescu, the Ruma-nian Foreign Minister, to declare war on the United States, a mis-take Finland refused to make .

1942May-July . Difficult but continuously victorious advance of the German

and Rumanian Armies on the Southern Russian Front . Kerch,Sebastopol, and the whole of Crimea taken . Hundreds of thousandsof prisoners and enormous amounts of war booty taken . After thecapture of Rostov, half of the German and Rumanian troops thatwere destined to encircle and take Stalingrad are sent to the Cauca-sus in order to conquer the oil producing territories . (This wasa fatal mistake-opposed vainly by the Rumanian command . Other-wise Stalingrad would, very likely, have been taken by surprise .Once more it was forgotten that the destruction of the enemy forcesis the purpose of war and that economic or other interests arecared for after victory .)

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August 6-September 3 . Crossing of the Don. The Fourth RumanianArmy takes its position along a line 100 kilometers south-west ofStalingrad, without any armored or motorized units, with horse-drawn artillery and with no possibility of building a significantreserve for this sector with only 180,000 men to cover it . High andlow-ranking Rumanian officers signal the danger of the situationto the German command : Weakness of the line and insufficientarmament to hold the front against continuously increasing massesof enemy troops and armament .

October 1-11 . The Rumanian Third Army takes position along theDon, north of Stalingrad : Seven divisions no better armed thanthe Fourth Army in charge of a front of 120 kilometers and facingcountless Soviet divisions provided with the best, modern andabundant armament by Russia's Western allies . The German com-mand opposes the Rumanian suggestion to liquidate immediatelythe bridgehead the Red troops had kept on the right shore of theDon. This front must be kept quiet. No maneuvering . Stalingradwill be taken by frontal attack .

November 19 . Beginning of the great Soviet offensive on the Don andthe Volga, against the Rumanian Armies north and south of Sta-lingrad. The front pierced by Soviet tank divisions . Five Rumaniandivisions lost. The Italian and Hungarian contingents included inthe debacle .

November 19-20 . After one month of sterile frontal attacks by theGerman troops, retreat from Stalingrad .

End of November. First secret contacts between Antonescu's Govern-ment and the Western Powers . The contact between the enemyand the politicians led by Iuliu Maniu, chief of the NationalPeasant Party, had already started in the very first days of Ruma-nia's war against Soviet Russia, when Maniu organized a secret sys-tem of information for the Western Powers which was sendingthis information to the Soviet command . Repeated Legionary warn-ings in Berlin and in Bucharest to the German Envoy are totallydiscounted

1943January 2 . Antonescu visits Hitler. Reconciliation after crisis of recip-

rocal incriminations concerning the Stalingrad disaster .January 19 . Mihai Antonescu, the Rumanian Foreign Minister, asks

Mussolini to take the lead of a Latin League including the minorbelligerents and to start negotiations with the Western Powers .

February 1-15 . Contact between the emissaries of Mihai Antonescu inBern with the Western Powers, through the Papal Nuncio Bernar-dini; and in Bucharest through the Turkish Ambassador .

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February 2 . The German General Hansen reports to Hitler concerningthe Rumanian troops in the Crimea and the Caucasus : "All theRumanian units show an indomitable will to resist the Red Army'sadvance; distinguished among them are the First and Second Divi-sions of the Mountain Corps and the Ninth Division ." It is not atthe front that betrayal is prepared .

July 1 . Mihai Antonescu again in Rome, suggests that Mussolini beginimmediate negotiations with the Western Powers .

July 25-26. Mussolini kidnapped by King Victor Emmanuel ; abandonedby the majority of the Fascist leaders, but not by his Black Shirts .

July-August . Renewed warning by Legionary leaders in Berlin and inBucharest. Killinger, the German Envoy, absolutely ignorant ofwhat is going on around him, disregards them all .

September 23 . Antonescu visits Hitler . Hitler asks him not to receive ananti-Mussolini Italian Envoy, and to dismiss Mihai Antonescu .Marshal Antonescu refuses to comply . Hitler, deceived until thenby the reassuring reports from his Envoy in Bucharest, begins tounderstand the real attitude of Rumania's leaders .

November 28-December 1 . Teheran Conference where Roosevelt is aguest, not of the United States Embassy, but of the Soviet Embassy .Joins the murderers of Katyn in recommending the assassinationof 40,000 German officers after victory . Admits all the territorialpretensions of Stalin in Europe . Asks only that this arrangementbe kept secret until after the Presidential elections in the UnitedStates. In Ankara, Eden tells the Foreign Minister of Turkey thatSoviet Russia will be given a free hand in the Balkans after thewar.

December 24 . Beginning in Stockholm of secret negotiations betweenMarshal Antonescu's emissaries and members of the Soviet Embassy .(Not even Antonescu had fully realized the implacability of theCommunist Beast and the impossibilities of any arrangement, be-tween Soviet Russia and her neighbors, which would not finallyengulf them in Communist-dominated territory .)

PART V

1944March 17 . Barbu Stirbei in Cairo sent by Iuliu Martin and Dinu Bra-

tianu, chief of the Liberal Party, with the approbation of KingMichael, in order to discuss secretly conditions of a separate peaceor an armistice with the Western Allies . (The error of the King andof the politicians was as great as that of Marshal Antonescu : Inthe policy and the intentions of the Western leaders there was

Analytical Chronology / lxi

no trace of anti-Communist solidarity, a situation which prevailseven today in the Western chancelleries .)

March 18 . Stirbei is informed that the subject of discussion can be onlyabout "operational details concerning the overthrow of the Anto-nescu regime and its replacement by a Government prepared toaccept unconditional surrender ." The conditions of this surrender,already established between the Western Powers and Soviet Rus-sia, are imparted to the Rumanian emissaries only towards the endof August .

April 18 . Harriman's telegram from Moscow to the United States Secre-tary of State : "In my talk with Molotov last evening he told me thatthe Rumanian troops were still fighting the Red Army and thatthose who surrendered had done so only after battle . In the Crimeathe resistance was particularly stubborn as the Rumanian divisionsthere consisted of better trained troops ." Meanwhile Maniu, Bra-tianu, and King Michael were asking for a powerful Soviet offen-sive, for a Soviet debarkment in Dobruja and for the bombing ofvarious Rumanian localities .

May 12 . Roosevelt's "Dear Peter" letter to the young King of Yugoslavia,ordering him most affectionately to dismiss General Drala Mihailo-vich, the legendary hero of the Yugoslav resistance, as Minister ofNational Defense, and to replace him by Broz-Tito, the Communistleader, hated by the Yugoslav people and without military value asan ally.

June 1 . The Rumanian emissaries in Cairo are informed that "furthernegotiations would serve no purpose" and that Mr . Maniu "shouldfollow the advice already given him by sending an officer to makedirect contact with the Red Army on the front ."

June 6. Invasion of France .June 29. A certain Constantin Visoianu, Maniu's new emissary who ar-

rived in Cairo on May 25, has authority which prevails over Stir-bei's. Contrary to what was occurring in Stockholm, and in a certainmeasure until then in Cairo, Visoianu abandons any effort to securedesirable guarantees for Rumania . He accepts, in Maniu's name,unconditional surrender, expressing only Maniu's hope that the con-ditions finally imposed will not be too severe . He also transmitsManiu's plans and proposals : "The change of government shalltake place simultaneously with a massive Soviet offensive ." Maniualso asks for a debarkment in Dobruja, for Allied bombing raids,for three airborne brigades, and two thousand parachutist troops :"Whether these Allied contingents are to be Anglo-American orRussian is left to the decision of the Supreme Allied Command ."King Michael, and the Patriotic Democratic Front, which has been

lxii / Analytical Chronologyformed with the Communists, are in full accord with those pro-posals .

July 2 . United States Political Adviser Robert Murphy to Washington :"The Allies are warned against any illusion that any understandingis possible with Antonescu ." The Marshal is negotiating with theRumanian Army behind him whereas the politicians are preparingthe disarmament of our troops and the kidnapping of their Com-mander-in-Chief .

July 9-August 7 . Between those two dates Maniu reiterates, four times,his proposals without receiving any answer from the Allied repre-sentatives other than that those proposals have been transmitted totheir respective Governments .

August 5-6. Last meeting between Hitler and Antonescu .August 20 . Beginning of the great Russian offensive in northern Mol-

davia.August 21 . Observing the failure of his negotiations with the Soviets in

Stockholm and in full agreement with General Fiessner, Com-mander of the German troops on the Rumanian Front, MarshalAntonescu decides to organize a powerful resistance on the Focsani-Namoloasa-Galati Line . Betrayed in his intentions by the GeneralsAldea, Racovitza, Sanatescu, and Steflea .

August 23 . Antonescu and his Foreign Minister are summoned by KingMichael. They are kidnapped in the Palace and delivered to theCommunist agent Bodnaras .

August 23, ten p.m . King Michael's proclamation broadcast to histroops, declaring that an armistice has been signed with the Rus-sian command. Consequently he orders his army to cease any re-sistance . (No armistice had been signed and the result of this deceitto his soldiers was the capture and transfer to Russia and Siberia ofsixteen Rumanian divisions and the abandonment of Antonescu'sorders regarding the occupation of the Focsani-Namaloasa-GalatiFront .)

August 24 . Considering that the Bucharest Government had committedan act of treason against the Rumanian people and their destiny bythe arrest of Marshal Antonescu, the head of the Rumanian Army,and by handing him over to Soviet agents, Horia Sima and the Le-gionaries who were then in Germany, or free in other countries, de-cided to continue the fight against Rumania's implacable enemywith every means at their disposition . They start immediately theformation of the Rumanian National Army with all the Legionar-ies and all Rumanian volunteers then in Germany and with allthose who succeeded in joining them by crossing into Hungarianand Austrian territory .

Analytical Chronology / lxiii

August 30 . Rumania's new Government, including numerous Commu-nists following Italy's shameful example, declares war on its formerally .

August 31 . Plundering, destroying, murdering and raping, the Soviethordes occupy the whole of Rumania's territory and enter Bucha-rest. No Convention of Armistice having been signed or even dis-cussed, the Red troops behave as on enemy territory .

September 13 . The Convention of Armistice falsely announced twenty-one days before is finally signed on the dotted line in Moscow bythe Rumanian delegates. It is an unconditional capitulation thatput Rumania entirely in Soviet hands .

September 12-December 5 . Under the pressure of the Red Army, thesuccessive Governments in Rumania are more and more of a Com-munist character. General Radescu, last non-Communist PrimeMinister, attempts a timid resistance to this disastrous flow ofevents .

December 9 . U.S . Representative Burton Y . Berry cables Washingtonthat Iuliu Maniu told John Le Rougetel, the British Representa-tive in Bucharest, and him that "if he [Maniu] had known the So-viets were to be given a free hand in application of armistice termshe would not have advised the King to sign the armistice . He ar-gued that his pressure and the Rumanian action which resultedfrom it had actually advanced the Focsani-Galati Line, which mighthave been held a long time, to the very gates of Budapest." Thatwas the line upon which Antonescu and the loyal military leaderswanted to organize the national resistance when the Marshal, onMartin's advice, was kidnapped by King Michael and delivered tothe Communists .

December 10 . Formal constitution in Vienna of the Rumanian NationalGovernment . Five Legionaries : Horia Sima, Prince Michel Sturdza,Vasile Iachinschi, Corneliu Gheorghescu, Professor Manollescu ; andthree non-Legionaries : General Chirnoaga, Professor Singheorghe,Wladimir Christi.

1945February 7-11 . Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill meet in Yalta . The West-

ern Powers' side of the Conference is entirely controlled by HarryHopkins and Alger Hiss, later to be convicted for denying under oath,and contrary to testimonies and evidence produced, that he wasa Soviet agent . Poland sacrificed . Europe is dismembered . Ten Eu-ropean countries and one-third of Germany is left in Soviet hands,while from the Baltic States, from Poland, from East Germany, andfrom Rumania, millions of human beings are torn from their an-

lxiv / Analytical Chronology

cestral homes and sent to Siberian Arctic extermination camps . ToManiu and Bratianu who complain to Roosevelt and Churchillabout these barbarous proceedings, these statesmen who proclaimedthe "Three Liberties" and signed the Atlantic Charter, answer thatSoviet Russia has been allowed "to use manpower" as partial pay-ment of war indemnities .

February 11 . After a few verbal patriotic capers, General Radescu, theRumanian Prime Minister, takes refuge in the British Legation .After a few months of hibernation he flees in disguise to Cyprusand Portugal .

February 13 . After Hamburg, Berlin, Frankfort, and many other cities,the terrorist bombardment of Dresden. Estimated casualties : About300,000 victims . The greatest authenticated war crime, "the greatestcemetery in the world and in history." Nobody hanged for it .

March 6. The first regiment of the Rumanian National Army takes po-sition along the Oder, where it is inspected by General Platon Chir-noaga, Minister of Defense in the Rumanian Government-in-Exile .

March 8 . Vyshinsky forces King Michael to appoint Communist PetruGroza as Prime Minister of Michael's now purely Communist Gov-ernment. The King, Maniu, and Dinu Bratianu ask vainly for Al-lied support.

April 12 . Death of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt .April 28 . Murder of Benito Mussolini .April 29-30 . Suicide of Adolf Hitler.May 7. Germany's unconditional surrender .May 7 . End of the activities of the National Rumanian Government .

Retreat of the troops engaged on the Oder . The rest of the FirstDivision of the Rumanian National Army, in training in Austria,surrenders to Anglo-American troops. (The Rumanian Government-in-Exile was a logical reaction to the treacherous behavior in Buch-arest of the Palace clique and of the power-hungry, panicky, faith-less politicians ; and a desperate attempt to prevent the unavoidableconsequences of this behavior ; suppression of any liberty for theRumanian people, suppression of any independence for the Ru-manian State .)

June 26 . In San Francisco, end of the United Nations Conference, overwhich Alger Hiss presided as Acting Secretary General . Soviet Rus-sia admitted as a partner, with three seats instead of one as in thecase of every other member, into an association supposed to defendthe rights of man and the independence of nations .

July 17-August 2 . Potsdam Conference. Soviet Russia senselessly invitedto participate in the war against an already defeated Japan whichtwo months before had offered to negotiate through Moscow. Prel-

Analytical Chronology / 1xv

ude to the delivery of the whole of China to the Communist empire .August 6-August 9 . Wanton atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Naga-

saki, killing 170,000, injuring and maiming countless others for life .Nobody is hanged for this .

December 21 . U.S . Army General George S . Patton dies in Germany asa result of injuries suffered in an automobile-truck collision on De-cember 9. (Patton's untimely death is followed by that of formerSecretary of Defense James V. Forrestal, who plunged to his deathon May 22, 1949, from the sixteenth floor of Bethesda Naval Hos-pital .)

1946March 13-July 17 . Communist Josip Broz (Tito) kidnaps, summarily

judges, and assassinates Serbian General Dr0a Mihailovich . Tito,the murderer of tens of thousands of Mihailovich's followers, wasimposed as ruler of the Yugoslav people by the British and Ameri-can Governments without any reason other than their submission tothe Anonymous and Omnipotent Powers who decided that the ham-mer and sickle should replace the Cross where it has reigned forabout two thousand years . Another move in the astounding gameof the systematically directed suicide of the Western World . Dupli-cation of the Kolchak episode, but this time with Churchill on theside of the kidnappers .

March 17 . Marshal Ion Antonescu is sentenced to death by one of thekangaroo courts whose pullulations will be a sad characteristic ofthe Western Powers' victory. (King Michael could have exercisedhis right of mercy, but to Rumania's astonishment and humiliationhe did not do it .)

October 15 . Reichsmarschall Hermann Goring commits suicide two hoursbefore he would have been hanged .

October 16 . At 1 :11 a.m ., crowning the horrors of six years of war, For-eign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, Feldmarschall WilhelmKeitel, General Alfred Jodl, and seven other National Socialist lead-ers are executed in Nurnberg followed by an orgy of similar outragesin Europe and in Japan . This is the beginning of a new era in West-ern justice where all the basic principles of law established throughcenturies of maturation in countries of both Roman and consuetu-dinary traditions will be forsaken and where judges and hangmenwill belong to the same fraternity .

1947December 30 . Abdication of King Michael under the pressure of the

enemy army which he and the Rumanian politicians had helped totake possession of their country. FINIS DACIAE!

PART ONE

Prelude

A wind of reaction was blowing at that time overthe whole of Russia against the devastating furors ofBolshevism . The struggle for emancipation in theUrals, in Siberia, in the Donets and in the northernprovinces, had torn from the authority of the Sovietsa great part of Russian territory . Bolshevism seemedto be on the verge of collapse .

It was saved by the intervention of the allied pow-ers, and principally by the untoward intervention ofPresident Wilson [who] secured the survival of theCommunist regime . The Bolsheviks themselves wereconvinced that the experiment of Communism hadreached its end; they were more surprised than any-body else at the unexpected turn of events.

Joseph NO ULENSAmbassador o f FranceMon Ambassade en Russie Sovietique, 1917-1919(My Embassy in Soviet Russia)

Hungary's capital, an excellent base for the con-quest of Central Europe by Bolshevism, had becomeits headquarters . Some of the most eminent strategistsof revolution had settled there under the cover ofcommercial, financial and even humanitarian mis-sions. The majority of them had kept their postsafter the occupation of the city by the RumanianArmy. The liberators of Hungary had not turnedthem out in order to avoid provoking the remonstra-tions of the Supreme Council, whose thunders, inthose circumstances, were hurled not against the Bol-sheviks but against the Rumanian soldiers, who insmothering this furnace of bloody anarchy, had savedWestern Civilization despite itself in that part ofEurope . . . . Many revolutionaries, expelled fromHungary, had come back after the armistice in U .S .uniforms, and it was their reports to Wilson that in-spired the policy of the Supreme Council in CentralEurope .

In 1919, it was Wilson, godfather of the League ofNations as well as master of the Supreme Council,who forced it to adopt a scandalous partiality infavor of Bolshevism .

Collective security, indivisible peace . . . . Thismeans simply a pro-Soviet crusade in the event of aGerman-Russian conflict . [Roman added.]

SAINT-A ULAIREAmbassador of FranceGeneve contre la Paix(Geneva against Peace)

CHAPTER

I

The Past in Us

Chateaubriand, the famous French author and statesman, nar-rating in his Memoires d'Outre-tombe the past and the glories of theChateaubriand family, informs us that he does it only for the sake ofhis nephews who might be interested in such futile things . Less phari-saical than he, I confess that I do it for the contentment of my ownpredilections.

I believe that every race, every country, every province, every hamleteven, has not only the right but also the duty to cherish and respect itshistory, and that the forgetting of a country's past by its leading classis one of the greatest misfortunes that can occur to it. A nation that hasbeen mentally severed from its past is like an army whose line of com-munications has been cut off by the enemy. This is what happened inRumania after World War I with the disappearance of the traditionalConservative Party .

It is also what brought me into the Legionary Movement, in whichI found and recognized the links with times gone by which had beenlost by our political sects .At the origin of the oldest Rumanian families, of the Rumanian

uradel, history always finds a kneaz,l military chieftain and adminis-trator of high and low justice in the territory over which he rules . A. D .Xenopol, the well-known historian, in his Histoire des Roumains de laDacie Trajane quotes a chart of King Bela II of Hungary dated 1230,which mentions the Kneaz Vlad Sturdza and his sons John and Lirthuon

1 Boyard means "warrior," and was the title of every member of the landowning no-bility . Voevod means "war-leader," corresponding to the Western "duke," and was thetitle of the reigning princes of Moldavia, Walachia, and Transylvania . Kneaz andkneazina were titles belonging only to the Rumanian uradel-the descendants of theold rulers of the independent or semi-independent kneazate or judete .

3

4 The Suicide of Europe

in relation to some military services rendered and to the confirmation ofcertain land ownership.

The Sturdza name has been woven into the history of Moldavia-oneof the two principalities that, with Walachia and later Transylvania,form Rumania of today-since the birth of that East European state .Kneaz Nan was the companion of the founder's grandson . Balita, hisgrandson, fought the Turks in the fifteenth century under Stefan theGreat, the Moldavian hero . The Polish historian Orehovius mentionsthe Great Hetman John Sturdza Burgrave of Hotin coming to the rescueof the Polish troops at the head of the Moldavian cavalry : . . . quorumprincipes erant Sturdza ac Movilae (" . . . whose princes were Sturdzaand Movilae"). Kneaz Barboi and his son were defeated by the Turksand the Tartars at the battle of Cornu Luncei . Barboi was impaled, hisson hanged, on the spot where their widow and mother had erected,toward the end of the sixteenth century, the still-existing Barboi Mon-astery .

Mathew Sturdza, the son-in-law of the Voevod ("Reigning Prince")of Moldavia, Gheorghe-Stefan-who was known as the Wandering Princeand whom Louis XIII of France addressed as "mon bon frere"-wagedall the wars of his father-in-law . His young children, pursued by theTurks, the eternal enemy, had to take refuge at the court of HungarianPrince Michael Apaffy of Transylvania . Maurus Jokai, the HungarianWalter Scott, records in one of his novels how Apaffy's wife, AnnaBornemisza, saved them at the last moment from being delivered totheir persecutors by her husband . Anna-Maria Sturdza, one of those chil-dren, who later reigned in Walachia with her husband Gregory Ghyka,kept up a long friendship and an abundant correspondence with herneighbor and savior, of which a few letters were once in my possession .Soror nobis Domina Vicina ("to our sister the neighbor princess"), readsthe mutual address .

It was her brother Elie Sturdza, last Voevod to be elected at that timeby the Moldavian boyards according to the traditional national rules,who abdicated almost immediately and threatened to behead half of thenobility if they forced him to the throne once more, as they intendedto do .Alexander Sturdza, the great Chancellor of Prince Demetrius Cantemir,

one of the most learned men of his time, was caught by the Turks . Alsocaptured was Peter the Great of Russia and his ally Prince Cantemir,but all three escaped thanks to the cleverness of Czarina Catherine .Alexander lived for a long while as an exile in Russia. Another Alex-ander Sturdza, his great-grandson, was a favorite adviser of Czar Alex-ander I, Napoleon's contemporary. He earnestly warned the Czar againstthe secret societies and especially against the Illuminati of Adam Weis-

The Past in Us / 5haupt. It was about him and his family that Joseph de Maistre had said :La famille Stourdza est a elle seule toute une Academie ("The Sturdzafamily is by itself a whole academy") .

About two hundred years after Elie Sturdza's election and abdication,John-Alexander Sturdza was proclaimed Reigning Prince of Moldavia,the first to be elected again according to the traditional rules after along period of foreign interferences . He was soon followed on thethrone by Michel-Grigory Sturdza . Both were hard but excellent rulerswho reestablished law and order in their troubled and agitated country .

Basil Sturdza, the Regent, was my grandfather . He belonged to a newgeneration of boyards who were influenced by new ideas born of theFrench Revolution and the Napoleonic wars, and in the mid-nineteenthcentury they were ready to renounce all their privileges without evenbeing asked to do so. He was, with his brother-in-law Constantin Negri,the principal factor on the Moldavian side in the historical union ofMoldavia and Walachia . This union gave birth to the Rumanian state .They declined with a smile and a thank-you the crown that was unani-mously offered to them . Both served with unshakable fidelity the manon whose head this crown was finally placed : Prince Alexander JohnCuza, later victim of a plot organized by the Liberal Party, whose mem-bers were already called "the Reds" in Rumania.My grandmother on my father's side and my great-grandmother on

my mother's side were both the sisters of Constantin Negri, the greatpatriot and idol of his generation, and one of the purest figures of Ru-manian history. His other sisters were Princess Ruspoli di Pogio Suaza ;Helen, who died young and beautiful but still lives in the immortalstanzas of her fiance, the great Rumanian poet Vasile Alexandri ; andEugenia, Abbess of the Convent of Varatic, which was situated in oneof the prettiest regions of the Moldavian Carpathians, and where wespent many summers of our childhood. The distance of about fifty mileswas covered by four-in-hand carriage with a stop at Tescani, the countryseat of my mother's sister, where we were generally joined by her chil-dren, our beloved cousins and playmates .

It was in Tescani that I saw one afternoon, stopping before the stairsof the white mansion, a team of four nimble ponies, masterfully drivenby a young girl of fourteen . The girl was to become my wife ten yearslater. She had come with her mother for an afternoon visit from Coma-nesti Court, the huge mountain estate of her grandfather, Prince DimitriGhyka-Comanesti .

It was in the same nook of the Carpathians that my wife and I spentour childhood and adolescence. It was between Tescani and Comanes§ tithat we spent the months of our betrothal . It was in Comanes§ti that wewere married. We shared the same love of life in the open, of riding,

6 / The Suicide of Europe

hunting, and fishing . We spent part of our honeymoon camping in themountains, and never lost an opportunity to spend weeks and evenmonths under tents and before campfires, a taste shared later by our son .

At Varatic, Abbess Eugenia told us more than once the story of herordination, which haunted our imagination when we were children. Ithappened that Eugenia's parents, having found that there were toomany girls in the family, had brought Eugenia and her sister Helen,aged ten and twelve, to the Monastery of Varatic . Upon seeing theirmother leaving them there, the two girls in their despair started run-ning alongside the carriage, trying to climb into it . Their mother, afterentreating them to go back, repeatedly slapped their grasping handswith her fan, until they had to abandon their attempt . This was theterrifying side of the story ; but then came the redeeming part . At thedeath of their father, their brother Constantin, then studying in Paris,hastened to Varatic where his young sisters were still postulants, offeredthem a substantial part of their father's inheritance, and insisted thatthey return to the outside world. Helen yielded easily to her brother'srequest, but Eugenia preferred to stay in her peaceful seclusion . Wewere so spoiled, pampered and happy whenever we visited the nunneryof Aunt Eugenia that we were almost inclined to forgive those cruelslaps on the hands of the two little girls .

Regarding those long, horse-driven journeys, which were a normalpractice at the time of my youth-there was a railway system plyingbetween the principal cities, but the country houses of kin and friends,which were so often the object of our trips, were generally far enoughfrom the nearest railway station to make a shortcut by road and carriagethe better solution . Being invited to a relative's or a friend's house wasa powerful incentive to go ; but in the Rumania of my youth an invita-tion was not at all necessary . One arrived and was welcomed and stayedas long as one felt, until the time had come to call on others or to gohome. There were some very well-known, impoverished gentle peoplewhose most valuable property was four horses and a carriage, or if nec-essary a sledge. Their annual journeys around the Moldavian country-side were as regular as that of the Earth around the Sun . When thosecyclic guests were also great hunters, as was the case with the person Ihave in mind, one was certain to see them coming at the right time forthe fall and winter hunting seasons .

My mother, whose maiden name was Jora, was the daughter of myfather's first cousin . Such weddings were not unusual in Moldavia inour family circle where marriages occurred almost always among thesame dozen or so families . The Joras had been fighting men who en-livened our old chronicles with their adventures . The ford where oneof them, pursued by some rival chieftain, was drowned with his horse

The Past in Us / 7

when trying to cross the Prut, is still called Vadul Jorei, the Jora Ford .Fleeing in hot pursuit must also have been Antioche Jora who wascaught half hanging from the drawbridge of the castle of Neamtz . Thebridge had been hastily drawn up by a too cautious bridge guard. How-ever, a seventeenth-century chronicler says that Jora escaped "with onlya pike sting in his buttocks." Dafina Jora, who lived about the sametime, was the wife of Voevod Dabija, Reigning Prince of Moldavia.Each time that hunting, the passion of my life, brought me to the four-centuries-old Monastery of Secul, I would read upon the portals of itschurch the names of the founders-the Great Vornic Nistor Ureche andhis Kneazina, Maria Jora. In the monastery's archondaric (guest room)where I spent many nights, I was never able to hear, as others did, thesuppressed breath of unfortunate Brother Ghidion, who had beenbricked in, says the legend, by the cruel Nistor for having dared to lookat the Kneazina with an unmonastic gaze .

Indeed, many a Banquo haunts the tragic chronicles of Moldavia. Mychildhood was spent in mansions and courts where wary maids walked (orrather, half-ran) the corridors at night, crossing themselves, a candle intheir hands. I have climbed expectantly the staircase of Ruginoasa,where the young and handsome Constantin still crawls, I was told, atthe appointed hour, bloody and ashen-faced, to die at the feet of hismother, killed by the bullets of her guardsmen . I have looked from theproper rooms and in the proper moonlight for the hanged monk tocome airily from the old elm tree in the park of Tescani and knock withhis muddy boots at the windows of his persecutors . Also in Tescani asa child, clad in my nightgown, I had often peeped through the keyholeof my safely bolted door, hoping to see the little red man striding upand down the echoing corridor. I sat in the huge armchair in the serv-ants' quarters in Dumbraveni, where the old housekeeper awoke fromher slumber to feel and see, to her horror, a paw "like that of a goose"firmly gripping her ankles . I never saw, heard, or felt any such thing.

The Rumanian past was made by boyards and peasants, the continua-tors, by direct blood inheritance or by substitution-as has been thecase with a certain part of the ruling class of foreign origin-of the oldDacian kingdom, which fought and sometimes defeated the Roman Em-pire more than two thousand years ago .

There has been also in the Rumanian past a middle class of tradersand shopkeepers, mostly of foreign extraction . More recently, since theunion of the principalities of Moldavia and Walachia in 1859, a bour-geois class with healthier relations to the Rumanian permanent back-ground had started to form . It was well on its way for the greater com-munity's benefit, but it was cruelly smitten after World War I by

8 / The Suicide of Europe

specifically Rumanian post-war factors-the fraudulently conductedagrarian expropriation, the catastrophic fall of the national currency,and the dropping of wages and salaries to the lowest level known inEurope-three basic factors which had transformed a country whereeverybody had known la joie de vivre into one where only the profiteersof the general misery and restricted political camarillas lived far re-moved from what was almost starvation .

The relations between boyards and peasants had been the subject ofthe wildest assertions, which were generally a planned part of the hostilepublicity that had always been aimed at Rumania .

The origins of and the reasons for this circumspect but systematicanti-Rumanian propaganda were multiple. A substantial part of it canbe traced to the propaganda of covetous or apprehensive neighbors.Hungary's hostility was understandable, as Rumania represented a realdanger to her. But the hostility of Russia had only one explanation :We were an indigestible non-Slavic obstacle upon the road to Constan-tinople (Tzarigrad) . However, the principal source and motives of thesubtle and permanent anti-Rumanian campaign were of internationalorigin and of ultra-political character .

For his good or for his harm, the Rumanian is strangely impenetra-ble. He juggles away, absorbs or capsulates the scanty foreign elementsthat have succeeded in entering his habitat . That goes for ideas, forgroups or for individuals, and has nothing to do with racism or lack ofhospitality. There is no country where the stranger is received moreheartily into the house of the humblest or the wealthiest ; and if youwere to talk of racism to a Rumanian peasant, he would ask you whatyou meant. The would-be conquerors of the world have, from this pointof view, found a much harder nut to crack in little Rumania than ingigantic Russia, and they have always hated us for that. Even now,when foreign ruling cliques and foreign ideologies have been superim-posed by force on the Rumanian structure, the Rumanian people arefarther from a Communist mental and spiritual conquest than the peo-ples of the Western "democracies."

The relations between the former ruling class and the peasants havealso been the subject of a flow of incorrect information from an insideorigin-from the Liberal Party and its publicists and pseudo historians,the foes of the Conservative Party. The leaders of the latter belongedgenerally to the ruling class of yore and succeeded in keeping, in thenewly created circumstances, a wise, moderating, and incorruptible in-fluence on Rumania's public affairs. The echo of this disparaging cam-paign of incorrect information vibrates today in many "twistorical"efforts, as for instance in those of Messrs . Hans Rogger and Eugen Weberin The European Right . "The Conservative party," Weber says, "loved

The Past in Us / 9

Rumania like a prey ." 2 To reach this conclusion, the two learned pro-fessors of history had to deprive their readers of the benefit of a seriesof conclusive facts, and had to proceed very unscientifically by unsub-stantiated affirmations . We will try to fill those gaps and rectify thoseerrors, common also to other biased parties, in the very short space wehave here for this task .

The landowners in Rumania were leaving the benefits of the cultiva-tion of a certain percentage of their land to the landless peasants inexchange for a certain number of days of work . The land reform billof 1860, voted by a Parliament the membership of which was comprisedalmost entirely of landowners (all of them boyards), declared the peas-ants full owners of the lot they were then cultivating as tenants, therebyliberating them from any obligation toward their former landlord . Inthe course of the sixty following years, and terminating with the bigagrarian reform of 1917-1921, ninety-two percent of the arable land ofthe country was passed into the hands of the peasants . The landowners,the majority of whom were members of the old ruling class, with animportant minority of the newly formed bourgeoisie, received as com-pensation one-third of one percent of the value of the expropriatedproperty, thanks to a fraudulent application of the law of expropriation-a law that had been passed without any opposition from the land-owners during World War I . This fraudulent application had of courseas an objective the liquidation of the Conservative Party . One does notfind any mention of this agrarian reform of 1917-1921 in the writingsof the majority of the commentators of Rumanian modern social his-tory; or if it is mentioned it is alluded to in such a way, as in The Euro-pean Right, as to hide completely the importance of the distributionand the greatness of the sacrifice .

It is generally pretended that the contacts between landowners andpeasants in Rumania were more remote than in any other Europeancountry. This time, the misinformers chose not to alter the truth but toeffect its complete reversal . Rumania's feudality was a paternal feudal-ity, the character of which seems to have escaped many superficial West-ern observers, who base their facetious impressions quite often on theold Rumanian custom of hand-kissing. Hand-kissing in Rumania's so-cial life of yore had absolutely no servile significance . In my time girlsand boys kissed the hand of their elders, men or women ; in a formergeneration even the younger boys kissed the hand of their elder brothers .We kissed the hand of our old nurses and they kissed ours. It was anexpression of affection . Our peasants kissed our hands as they would

2 Eugen Weber, "Romania," in Hans Rogger and Eugen Weber, eds ., The EuropeanRight, a Historical Profile (Berkeley and Los Angeles : University of California Press,1965), p . 515.

10 / The Suicide of Europe

have kissed that of their father or of their elder brother, of their pro-tector, because we were their protectors . Nobody died of hunger, of coldor of misery in the villages of the boyards .

Help was always to be found at the court, as our homes were called,where the church of the village was also to be found . Every newly mar-ried couple received as a present a pair of oxen and a plough . Marriagesand christenings, at which the boyards often played the part of god-father and godmother, created a real spiriutal relationship between thelandlord and the villagers . It was in the home of one of her spiritualdaughters that my wife found refuge with our grandson at the worsttime of the Communist persecution . The friendly and familiar relationsbetween the peasants and the boyards are borne out by Rumanian folk-lore. The haiduc, the beloved Robin Hood of our legends and of ourhistory, is never represented as hostile to the boyards, but only to theciocoi, the parvenu (newcomer), generally of foreign origin . Haiducsand boyards often in popular ballads, and sometimes in reality, coordi-nated their activities .

But it is not the ceremonial aspects of Rumania's social life whichany serious historian should take into account when appraising themerits or the demerits of the old Rumanian ruling class ; it is rather thefact, also never mentioned by our "twistorians," that toward the middleof the nineteenth century our grandfathers and great-grandfathers, doingwhat no other ruling class has ever done in any other country-andwithout being forced to it by any revolution, or even pressed to it by arural population uncontaminated by any Illuminati penetration-gaveup privileges freely enjoyed by them for centuries in the old code knownas the obiceiul pamantului (custom of the soil) and accepted a modernand liberal constitution and civil laws so docilely copied from the Bel-gian Civil Code that they provided for indemnification of damagescaused by rabbits, an animal that has never lived in our country .

It was the large land bequests of the ruling class exclusively that hadbuilt up for centuries the two big charitable foundations, Brancoveneasaand Sanct Spiridon. These foundations had covered Walachia and Mol-davia with hospitals and infirmaries where the poor were cared for, ab-solutely free, by the best available practitioners . (Few Western "democ-racies," we note, have solved so thoroughly the problem of medical carefor the poor .)

It is with veneration and pride that we remember those forefatherswho loved their country and their people well enough to give up theirprerogatives and power, not because they were asked to do so but be-cause they believed it was the right thing to do . But seeing those whohave replaced them in the national and political life of Rumania, espe-cially after World War I, we wonder whether these same forefathers

The Past in Us / 11

would do it again, and whether it was not the few old bearded, water-pipe smoking boyards, irreverently called "the ghosts" by their offspring,who were right in wanting to keep at least a part of the traditional es-tablishment, which in that convulsed and embattled part of the conti-nent had saved the Rumanian national life during the hardest and mostinvolved circumstances.

CHAPTER

II

Early Posts and World War I

Prince Alexander John Cuza, who had signed the historic Actof Appropriation (1859-1861) involving the Rumanian peasantry, wasdethroned by a conspiracy of a small group of officers, affiliated with theLiberal Party, who surprised him in his palace on the night of February11, 1866. Prince Carol Hohenzollern, who followed him on the Ruma-nian throne, did not, as he was asked by the rest of the army, punishthe conspirators . As a consequence, sixty of the most distinguished offi-cers resigned immediately . In our family such was the loyalty we held tothe memory of the dethroned prince that almost half a century afterthat unpunished act of treason, my brother John and I did not choosea military career, for which we felt a great inclination, because wefound also that the stain on our flag had not yet been washed away ; welater regretted very much this romantic attitude .

I was brought up in a home where memories and events of the timesgone by were told and retold to the children, often by very old relativeswho had witnessed some of them, or had known their protagonists whenthey were themselves children . We listened with the eagerness and fasci-nation of our age and this explains in part, no doubt, the deep interestI have felt since my early years in all matters concerning the life, the vicis-situdes and the dreams of my nation, and my growing desire in later yearsto play my part in this life and to help those dreams come true .

But there was in me a strong inhibition towards the fulfillment ofsuch ambitions : It was the repulsion I felt for all the political and elec-toral comedy through which one had to pass in my country, as in somany "democracies" of our era, in order to be able to exercise any in-fluence on public affairs. It was this inner conflict that made me choosethe diplomatic career as a final orientation for my activities .

My career almost ended without laurels before it really began . In12

Early Posts and World War I / 13

January 1914, I was a young attache at the Rumanian Legation inDurazzo, then the capital of the new Albanian State . I had chosen Al-bania for my first post because of its medieval character and becauseof the presence of a Rumanian population in its southern provinces .Living in Albania at that time was like living in the fifteenth century,with all the enchantment of an incomparable tradition of chivalry, ofcourage, and of unshakable fidelity for the recognized leader.

I could not relate more concisely the reprehensible facts that broughtme to the threshold of a well-deserved and inglorious dismissal than byquoting the French newspaper Le Temps:

The troops of Prenk Pacha Bib Doda under the command of the Ru-manian Military Attache, Colonel Sturdza, have stormed the Ishmi castleafter a fierce battle and are marching toward Durazzo .

It was not Colonel Alexander Sturdza, who at that time was the Ru-manian Military Attache in Berlin, but the Reserve-Lieutenant andAttache to the Rumanian Legation in Durazzo, Michel Sturdza, who atthe head of about three thousand warriors, Mirdites and Malissores, wastrying with variable results, to break the siege of Durazzo, which wasunder attack by various tribes of insurgents .

The truth is that, completely enraptured by Albanian magic andlore, I had abandoned to Mr. Burghelea, my chief, the premises of ourLegation and attached myself to the corps of hard-working, hard-fight-ing Dutch officers who were in charge of the Albanian militia, and whowere facing a foreign invasion in the south and an insurrection in thenorth. Colonel Thompson, the defender of Durazzo, had been killed ina recent battle, and Major Kronne, who was asked to take his place, hadleft me in command of his troops, with whom I was trying to do mybest.

The trouble was that neither Mr. Burghelea nor Mr . Porumbaru, ourMinister of Foreign Affairs, had any real appreciation of my militaryinitiatives . After playing truant for about five months I finally feltobliged to part with my gallant companions and to answer a last andcomminatory summons from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs . Back inBucharest, where normally a well-deserved punishment would haveawaited me, I was saved by the important events of the moment-theassassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand in Sarajevo (June 28, 1914)and the beginning of World War I, which gave good Mr. Porumbaruthe opportunity to speak Latin : De minimis non curat pretor ("thepraetor doesn't worry about small things"), and to appoint me to thecipher department of his Cabinet .Between the beginning of the war and Rumania's entering it-and

with some interruption of my diplomatic activities by various periods

14 / The Suicide o f Europe

of military service with my unit, the first squadron of mounted artillery-I was moved from our central administration to our Legation inAthens, and ultimately to our Legation in Bern. It was there that mywife and I learned that Rumania had declared war on the Austro-Hun-garian Empire. A few weeks earlier I had published my book La Rou-manie Peut-elle Combattre sur deux Fronts? (Can Rumania Fight onTwo Fronts?), which recommended the evacuation of a part of our ter-ritory and the erection of a strong line of defense from the Carpathiansto the Danube that would cover Bucharest and the oil-producing re-gions.' After the declaration of war, I left for Rumania without delay,leaving my wife in Bern, who followed me a short time later, and ournewborn son, whom we left with an aunt of ours in Nice . We were notto see him again until two years later .

The battle of Bucharest, in which I was wounded, could have beenwon, perhaps even without the line of modern fortifications I had beensuggesting, but for the treacherous immobility of the Russian troopsthat were supposed to attack on our left flank . In my book Avec l'ArmdeRoumaine2 dedicated "To the heroic memory of my brother, LieutenantJohn Sturdza, and of my brother-in-law, Lieutenant Alexis Mavrocor-datu, killed by our allies the Russians," I have already recorded my warexperiences. I will mention here, therefore, only one significant episodebecause of its direct connection with one of the principal themes of thisbook, and also three incidents of a more personal character, the detailsof which became known to me after the mentioned publication .

In the summer of 1917 we were aligned along the Siret with the Sec-ond Cavalry Division; I was in command of a section of armored cars .We were expecting at any moment the order to attack. Our troops,finally armed in terms of modern warfare, had been victorious at M trastiand Mdrasesti. Their morale on this eve of a meticulously prepared of-fensive was higher than ever . A few moments before the impatientlyawaited signal, the Russian troops started abandoning their positions .The order of retreat had been unexpectedly given by Alexander Keren-sky, the man who was busy at that time making Russia safe for Com-munism. All our efforts, all our preparations, were brought to nil andsoon we were forced to defend ourselves against our former allies, thesoldiers of the glorious Imperial Russian Army, transformed into adrunken and incontrollable rabble .

Real life is sometimes stranger in its surprises than anything the mostfanciful writer could imagine . Toward the end of World War I my

' The Central Powers included, in addition to Germany and Austria-Hungary, bothBulgaria and Turkey. Rumania, a member of the Allied Powers, had to fight Austria-Hungary on the northwest and Bulgaria on the south .

2 Michel Sturdza, Avec l'Armee Roumaine, preface by G . Lacour-Gayet of the FrenchAcademy (Paris : Hachette, 1918) .

Early Posts and World War I / 15

elder brother Constantin was located with his cavalry squadron close tothe demarcation line of the cease-fire agreement, which had been signedshortly before with the German and Austrian armies. The Austrian gen-eral in command on the other side of the line had complained to mybrother's chief, General Schina, that during that night a troop of un-known origin had attacked one of his squadrons, killed some of its sol-diers and stole all the horses . After that, said the Austrian general, thesetroops passed the line of demarcation and rode into Rumanian terri-tory. The Austrian general asked for explanations and appropriatemeasures. General Schina sent my brother to reconnoiter with his squad-ron. Nearing the border of the village in question, Constantin dis-mounted, posted his men, and sent one of his sergeants to offer a halfwaymeeting place to the officer in command of the mysterious troop . Theoffer was accepted, and the officer who cantered to the rendezvous uponone of those Austrian horses was our brother John .John, impatient, had taken service in the Russian Army one year be-

fore Rumania entered the war. He had fought on both the Europeanand Asiatic fronts, and when the Imperial Army started disintegrating,thanks to Kerensky's activities, John, as did many of his comrades, alongwith the loyal elements of his unit, formed a troop of volunteers withwhich he intended to join one of the generals of the Nationalist Russianresistance . My brother Constantin urged him to stay with our troops .General Schina insisted also and very understandingly offered John acommand in his division. John could not bring himself, however, toleave his companions . He crossed the Dniester next day not far fromHotin, where four hundred years earlier another John Sturdza hadbattled with other heathens . John was killed two days later in an am-bush and his troops were nearly exterminated by much superior Bol-shevik forces. Some survivors related the happenings to Constantin .

It was by the same enemy that my brother-in-law, Lieutenant AlexisMavrocordato, was attacked at night in the village in which he wascamped with his platoon . The fight lasted a few hours, and the troopsthat came too late to the rescue were Austrian soldiers commanded byCaptain von Hambar, the brother-in-law of the Rumanian ColonelDiculescu-Botez, who, as commander of Alexis' regiment, was killed inthe first days of the war . Hambar told us much later in Vienna thatAlexis and his men had fired their last rounds before falling on thespot where they were later buried .

In our childhood we discriminated among our uncles according tothe game that came out of their woods during the autumn and winterdrives. There were the wolf-uncles and the bear-uncles . Our beloveduncle George Donici was a bear-uncle. I described in Avec l'ArmeeRoumaine the death of that seventy-two-year-old boyard at the head of

16 / The Suicide of Europe

one of the last cavalry charges of modern warfare . One of the Germanofficers who was looking at the body of the old warrior exclaimed inRumanian to Captain Filiti, lying wounded among his fallen soldiers :"But this is George Donici of Valea Seacal" In civilian life this officerwas one of the German technicians who were taking care of the woodsin our province .The German colonel in command of the regiment with which the

squadron of Captain Filiti had collided, in a gesture of military courtesycompletely forgotten today, sent over the lines to my family in Bucharestthe row of medals won by George Donici in the 1877 war against theTurks, during which he served in my father's squadron. How differentfrom the Nurnberg travesty and from General Eisenhower's opinion,expressed in his memoirs, that chivalry toward the adversary is a de-plorable medieval inheritance from the time when soldiers were paidmercenaries and not patriots.

Toward the end of the hostilities with the troops of the CentralPowers, I passed through Petrograd at the moment General Lavr Korni-lov appeared at the gates of the city. He was feverishly expected becausehe represented the only possibility of saving Russia's capital from therepeated murderous attempts of Lenin and Trotsky's ignoble rabble .Kerensky forbade the general to enter the city, arrested him, and thusremoved the last obstacle in the way of the Bolshevik Revolution-aforeign revolution, prepared and directed from those dark recesses inNew York and other Western cities where Mob and Money collaboratein their sinister schemes .

CHAPTER

III

The Beast and Its Friends

The last days of the war found me in Italy where I was or-ganizing a volunteer Rumanian Legion comprised of the prisoners ofRumanian nationality taken from the Austrians by the Italian Army.Officers and soldiers were enlisting with the greatest enthusiasm. Thedifficulties I encountered came from the intrigues of the Rumanianpolitical cliques in Paris. Each group had a favorite general in mind forthe command of a combat unit which they had helped me in no wayto organize .It was at this time that I had my first experience with what I have

come to call "convenient deaths ." I had struck up a great friendshipwith General Milan R . gtefanik, a Slovak, and therefore a man extremelywary concerning Russia's intentions towards his homeland . Besides, hewas an inveterate anti-Communist . In the team of three-TomAi G .Masaryk, Steffinik, Dr . Eduard Benei-militating for an independentCzecho-Slovak State, he was number two in importance, representingthe conservative element, and was the advocate of Slovak semi-autonomywithin the Czecho-Slovak State .''In 1916 the Czecho-Slovak National Council was established in Paris with TomA§

Masaryk as President, Josef Diirich and Milan 9tef5nik as Vice Presidents, and EduardBene' as Secretary General . Durich was soon expelled from the Council for his pan-Slavism. Masaryk served as President of the Czecho-Slovak Republic from 1918 to 1935 .Bene§ was Foreign Minister from 1918 to 1935 and President from 1935 to 1938 andagain from 1945 to 1948 . The anti-Communist Stefanik was an astronomer who, aftercoming to France in 1905, became a French citizen and served in the French Air Forceon the Western Front and in the Balkans. He supported a Swiss-type organization forthe multinational Czecho-Slovak State as stipulated in the Pittsburgh Agreement ofMay 30, 1918 : "Slovakia shall have its own administration, its diet [parliament], its owncourts, and Slovak shall be the official language in the schools, state services, and pub-lic life ." With 5tef'anik, and not Bene§, guiding the foreign affairs of Czecho-Slovakia,the history of that country would have taken a different turn-one for the greatest bene-fit of Europe and the cause of peace. After Stefanik's death, the Masaryk-Bene"s establish-ment totally ignored the Pittsburgh Agreement; and the defenders of Slovak interestswere thrown into prison, where some of them lingered for eight years .

17

18 / The Suicide of Europe

His prestige was enormous, as he had been the organizer of theCzecho-Slovak volunteers, had fought with them on all the variousfronts, had been wounded several times, and besides had one of themost alert thinking apparatuses one could hope, or fear, to come across .I had seen Bene"s in the waiting room of Vittorio Orlando, the ItalianPrime Minister, holding Stefanik's brief-case-indicating Benes's sub-servient position .

On May 4, 1919, General Stefanik left Udine, Italy, by airplane forPrague, the capital of the country he had done so much to put on themap. He never reached it . He was shot down over Bratislava, Slovakia,by an anti-aircraft battery that had absolutely no business being there .It was thus that Benes replaced 9tefanik not only in the hierarchy ofCzecho-Slovak statesmen, but in that of the few personalities who wereto play a decisive part in forging the tragic destiny of our presentworld. I thought of foul play at the time of gtefinik's death, and mysuspicions were fully confirmed, years later, when Grand Duchess Olga,who was living in Slovakia as a refugee from Bolshevik terror, toldme there had never been any hostilities around the area of Bratislavaand that nobody understood the reason for that sudden and fateful burstof shrapnel .

In Petrograd I had had the opportunity to see the first signs of theexistence of certain Anonymous Forces ; forces which were the organiz-ers, the protectors, and the bankers of the host of foreign agitators who-with the help of a few thousand workers from the Putilof factories(rapidly and thoroughly organized under the protection of Kerensky'simposture)-had undertaken the conquest of the Russian Empire . I hadnot failed to observe also that it was very likely those same forces thathad prevented United States participation in the hostilities as long asthis participation would have benefited Imperial Russia . A short timeafter the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, two series of events re-moved my last doubts concerning the existence of an anonymous, pa-tient, omnipotent influence to which the Russian people owed theirpresent troubles and for which the conquest of Russia was only a be-ginning-a prelude to more extended conquests . Indeed, today theseconquests encompass more than one-half of the surface of this planetand include more than one-third of its population .

Up to the beginning of the last century, history was very difficult toignore, or to forget . As paradoxical as it may seem, it was the multipli-cation of the means of information that made the neglect of historypossible . When thousands of newspapers and magazines, when the radiobroadcasts, the tribunes, the chairs and the pulpits, seemingly at asudden and mysterious command, unanimously stop talking about a

The Beast and Its Friends / 19

certain event, it is as if this event did not happen, however notorious,however significant it may have been .

That is why I do not think it superfluous to recall the way thoseAnonymous Forces provoked the defeat of the Russian nationalist armies,and the effort they made to perpetuate the Communist regime of BelaKun in Hungary, a regime equally as bestial and demented as Lenin'sin Russia .Mr. Joseph Noulens, the French Ambassador to Moscow, has told us

in his book Mon Ambassade en Russie Sovietique, 1917-1919 that,alarmed by the growing sympathy shown by President Woodrow Wilsonfor the Bolshevik gang, which at that moment was being pressed onevery side by the Nationalist Russian troops, Premier Georges Clemen-ceau of France and Prime Minister David Lloyd George of Englandasked President Wilson whether or not lie intended to continue helpingthe Nationalist forces in association with France and Great Britain . ThePresident answered that his decision would depend upon Masaryk,whose advice Wilson always took, he told them, in matters concerningRussian affairs. The President's final decision was to allot not a dollar,not a rifle, not a round more, for Nationalist Russia .Mr. Noulens also states that the Trotsky-Lenin enterprise was on the

eve of a complete collapse and was saved by the new attitude adoptedsuddenly by President Wilson :

President Wilson secured the survival of the Communist regime . TheBolsheviks themselves were convinced that the experiment of Communismhad reached its end; they were more surprised than anbody else at the un-expected turn of events .

One can understand perhaps forgetting even such an important factas the President of the United States saving the Bolshevik horror fromimminent destruction ; but how could man's memory have forgotten theunbelievable treason of French General Maurice Janin and of hisCzecho-Slovak accomplices, an unmistakable counterpart in the decisionof Wilson and Masaryk .General Janin was the man picked by the French Government (or

by the hidden hands behind it) and by Mr. Masaryk to command all theAllied forces (including the Czecho-Slovak Legion) that were fightingin Siberia under the orders of Admiral Aleksandr Kolchak, the SupremeRuler of Russia and leader of the anti-Bolshevik forces . The Admiral'sdivisions were engaged in fierce fighting with the Bolshevik forces, whichhad been liberated by Wilson and Masaryk's decision .At six p.m. on January 14, 1920, two officers of the Czecho-Slovak

Legion, acting under orders from General Janin, kidnapped Admiral

20 / The Suicide o f Europe

Kolchak and his staff (his Government) in the Glaskov railway stationat Irkutsk and handed them over to the Bolshevik Political Centre inexchange for one-third of the 650 million rubles in gold and platinumbullion that formed the Imperial Russian Treasury which Kolchak wastransporting toward Vladivostok. On February 2 the Bolsheviks executedKolchak and his Prime Minister, Victor Pepeliaev . General Janin wasnever court-martialled, arraigned, or even blamed .The Czecho-Slovak share of the bullion, the price of blood and trea-

son, became the basis of the Czecho-Slovak Treasury-a strange founda-tion, along with Stefdnik's assassination, for Dr . Bene`s's ill-fated state .For the nauseating details of this horrible episode, which was at thattime unique in the military history of civilized countries, we refer thereader to Winston Churchill's The World Crisis, V, The Aftermath .2The continuation of Bela Kun's Government in Hungary in 1919

would have meant-besides the mortal danger it represented for Ru-mania caught in a Communist claw-the end of heroic Poland (then inthe pangs of her rebirth) ; the spreading of Communism in Germanyand Italy, where subversive forces were already in motion ; and perhapsthe end of Europe-a Europe that had seen traitors like Captain JacquesSadoul and Andr6 Marty triumphantly elected to the French Parliamentby millions of voters ; 3 and the Labour Party in Great Britain identifyitself entirely with Red Russia's interests .

Nevertheless, the Allied and Associated Powers tried everything inorder to save Bela Kun's regime, starting with a long and friendly visitby Jan Christiaan Smuts of the Union of South Africa to the Communisttyrant's headquarters . The advance of the Rumanian troops in Hungaryagainst Kun's regime took place in spite of the violent opposition ofthe Western Powers. And if it was Europe and not Bela Kun's regimethat was saved, this was only due to the high sense of responsibility ofRumania's King Ferdinand and of his Government, and to the forti-tude of the Rumanian soldiers .

We quote the former Ambassador to the Court of St . James, Count deSaint-Aulaire, in his book Geneve contre la Paix :

All the reprobation of the Allies' Supreme Council was not for the Hun-garian Bolsheviks but for the Rumanian soldiers who saved Western Civi-l General Drala Mihailovich, the Yugoslav hero of World War II, was betrayed under

almost identical circumstances into the hands of the Communist Tito . This time GreatBritain was the responsible party .

3 Sadoul was a Captain in the French Army, and Marty was a Seaman-Machinist inthe French Navy. Objecting to orders received to support the anti-Bolshevik WhiteRussians, they instigated the 1919 mutiny of French forces operating in the Black Seaarea. Upon their return to France, instead of being shot, they received only token pun-ishment. They were subsequently elected to the French Parliament on the Communistticket .

The Beast and Its Friends / 21

lization, despite itself, by cleaning this focus of bloody anarchy in that partof Europe .

In my country, public opinion and many of the principal leaders ofthe political parties were well aware at that time of the continuousmenace represented by the Soviet proximity . There were some of themhowever, belonging mostly to the National Peasant group, who couldnot hide their sympathies for the Kremlin gang of murderers . For in-stance, Mr. Bujor, Rector of the University of Iasi, declared in theRumanian Parliament without much originality : "A new light comesfrom the East ." In conformity with this new illumination, he tried tosuppress the traditional religious ceremony and the hoisting of the flagat the beginning of the academic year, provoking a violent reactionamong the students led by the young Corneliu Zelea-Codreanu, wholater was to become the symbol, the hero, and the martyr of the fightagainst the international conspiracy in Rumania . He was the true rep-resentative of the popular instinct, which in our country often has beenmore perceptive and independent than that of the majority of thepolitical leaders .

Few, indeed, were those leaders who understood the real meaning ofthe latest international events-Mr. William C . Bullitt's first missionto Moscow (1919), the Western-Soviet negotiations in Genoa (1922),and the anti-Polish declarations of the Czecho-Slovak statesmen-andwho realized that among the Western leaders, besides those who con-tinued to believe in the necessity of crushing the Bolshevik monster inits cradle, an opposed force and influences were growing from day today. This force and these influences friendly to the Soviets did notcontent themselves with recognizing the existence of the new Russia,but dreamed of her incorporation into a belligerent system of Europeanalliances, similar to that which faced the Central European Powers atthe beginning of World War I . This system, absolutely foreign to Ru-manian interests, endangered our very existence . Its advocates in France,our principal ally, extended from certain right-wing groups representedby Mr. Jean Barthou, through Mr . Edouard Herriot, Mr . Paul Reynaud,and Mr. Leon Blum on the extreme left .The continuous progress in Western political life of the pro-Soviet

doctrine already had made me reach, at that time, the conclusion thatthe moment would soon come when our existence as an independentstate could not further be ensured by our Western alliances, but onlythrough a political and military association with Poland and Hungary,directly menaced, as we were, by the Communist monster . It was thisconviction that made me abandon the diplomatic service, for a fewmonths in 1920, and take over a governorship in Transylvania, where I

22 / The Suicide of Europe

believed that more suave and tactful methods could win us the friend-ship of the Hungarian population . Following the same line of thoughtI arranged later to be sent to Budapest as First Secretary to our Legationthere .After the collapse of the Austrian Empire and the subsequent Ru-

manian annexation of Transylvania (which had been for a long while apart of the Kingdom of Hungary) several Hungarian statesmen (amongthem Count Pal Teleki and Count Istvan Bethlen) thought of offeringthe Hungarian crown to King Ferdinand of Rumania . Count MiklosBanfy, whom I had known during my administrative activity in Transyl-vania, and whom I met again in Budapest when he was HungarianMinister of Foreign Affairs, also supported the creation of such a newDanubian state . His reasons were however of a much deeper and morehistorical character than those of Bethlen and Teleki, who probablythought mainly of the possibility of Hungarian predominance in aRumanian-Hungarian federation .

Count Banfy was thoroughly convinced that because of the chaoticsituation in which the disappearance of the two Germanic empires hadleft this part of Europe, and because of the apparition on its menacedborders of the formidable and pestilential entity whose name was SovietRussia, only an organic union of our two countries, a merger of theirpolitical and military means, could in the long run ensure their survival .

When I left Budapest I hastened to communicate to King Ferdinand,and to Queen Marie, Count Banfy's views on the future and destiny ofour two countries . Both the King and Queen had been very receptive tothe proposals of Bethlen and Teleki, which were energetically opposed,however, by the chiefs of our various political parties, who worriedonly for their electoral problems .I do not know if Count Banfy has passed away in some Communist

prison or some Allied concentration camp, but if he is, as I hope, stillfree and alive, I am certain that he wonders, as I do, if the destiny notonly of our two countries but of Europe would not have been a happierone if his dreams, which were also mine, had come true .The insistence of the French and Czecho-Slovak political circles,

which considered the existence of Soviet Russia as a happy complementin the political life of Europe, had brought the Rumanian Governmentto agree reluctantly to negotiate with Soviet Russia the possibility ofestablishing diplomatic relations between the two countries . The nego-tiations took place in Vienna in 1925 where I had been transferred toour Legation as Counsellor.

The most promising assurances had been given us by the French andCzecho-Slovak middlemen. Our delegation recognized too late the trapinto which it had fallen. The Soviets had asked for those negotiations

The Beast and Its Friends / 23only in order to transform them into a vociferous propaganda platformfor their insolent pretensions to a part of our territory .

Little did I know at the time that I would myself have to face, asRumanian Representative, a similar Soviet attempt, but this time withmy own Minister of Foreign Affairs as my adversary and as the Krem-lin's associate .

I arrived in Washington at the roaring end of the Roaring Twenties-the Washington of yore where the streets were safe by day and nightfor women and children, where everybody knew everybody, wherewhiskey was served at the Mayflower Hotel in innocent looking tea cups,where there were always enough diplomats at a reception to justify aflow of Veuve Cliquot, where the Misses Patterson, who had never con-sented to climb into an automobile, ruled the social set from the heightof their brougham seats and regularly stole all the White House gueststhe night of the annual diplomatic reception .

I arrived in the capital of the United States in time to participate,with a delirious crowd, in the enthusiastic reception granted to the gal-lant Lindbergh. I signed with a flourish and a disrespectful smile theineffable Kellogg-Briand Pact . 4 Later on, as Rumanian Charge d'Affaires,I helped float for my country a loan of some three hundred milliondollars on the New York market.5 This gave me the opportunity to learna lot about that kind of operation . Among other things, I realized withamazement that before a single dollar could enter the Rumanian treas-ury we had to leave in the hands of middlemen and French bankersabout thirty-three percent of the loan's nominal value .

It was in Rock Creek Park, in Washington, that I had my first, butnot my last, experience with American helpfulness of the old pioneerbrand. I somehow had a breakdown with my new Nash in the middle ofthe creek and could do no less, nor more, than wade in water up to myknees, lift the hood, and look desperately at all the machinery . Seeing

'The Kellog-Briand Pact was signed in Paris on August 27, 1928, and entered intoforce on July 24, 1929. Sixty-two nations, including the Soviet Union, ratified thisPact which outlawed war "as an instrument of national policy ." To say that it hadthe slightest influence upon the policy of the signatories or that it promoted thecause of peace in the most imperceptible way would be exaggerating .

6 From several sides I had been advised that Mr . Louis Marshall's cooperation couldbe a decisive influence for our project . Mr. Marshall was the lawyer of important NewYork banks including, if I remember well, the Otto Kahn, the Warburg, the JacobSchiff, and Kuhn-Loeb institutions. I called on Mr. Marshall, and although our meetingstarted in a rather agitated atmosphere, it ended very peacefully . When taking leave ofthe famous lawyer, he showed me that part of New York that could be seen throughhis Wall Street window, and told me : "Look what we can do for a country we love,in Russia we have shown the world what we can do to a country we hate ." Mr .Marshall felt obliged to repeat this statement to our Financial Attache, Mr . GheorgheBoncescu .

24 The Suicide of Europe

my distress, a passing motorist stopped, alighted from his automobile,and after a moment's hesitation, jumped into the cold water with noregard for footgear and trousers, and quickly helped me out of myquandary.

We availed ourselves, my wife and I, of the opportunity of my firstleave of absence on the North American continent, to go for a five-weekhunting trip in northern Alberta, Canada. Broad then were the ranges,generous the bag limit, and game was everywhere . We came back withsix excellent head of bighorn, wild goats, and moose . We hiked alongthe Smoky River, with our two Indian guides, our Canadian cook andour twenty-eight packhorses, to the Eagle Nest Pass-a spot of unfor-gettable grandeur-without meeting any other hunting party or evenany other human being; a situation that would be hard to duplicate inthe crowded hunting grounds of today .Back in Washington, it was on our early morning cavalcades in Rock

Creek Park that we satisfied our enjoyment of life in the open and ourlove of streams and woods. Idaho Senator William E . Borah, on asturdy palomino, was almost always an earlier rider than we .

It was from the United States that the tailor Trotsky and his cosmo-politan companions set out for the conquest of the world, well-financedby New York bankers with that indispensable lubricant for makingwars and revolutions . And it was an American President who by hisattitude and his decisions saved the Soviet regime from a gory still-birth .Yet the United States waited until 1933 to recognize this regime . Whilein Washington I had the opportunity to find out that this contradictionin the United States policy toward the Soviets was only an apparent one .

Indeed, it was about that time that Washington made the fateful deci-sion to send technicians, engineers, and workers by the hundreds tohelp the Soviet Union build up her heavy and semi-heavy industry onthe most modern footing and with the most modern material ; thismaterial was sold of course by American industrialists . The argumentinvoked was that of the financial benefit not only to those big indus-trialists but also to the hundreds of technicians and workers who weresent into Soviet territory.

Sallust once said : "For the vile metal for which the plebeian was asavid as the rich speculators, the greatness of Rome collapsed, her bloodwas defiled, her glory and her honor were lost ."

CHAPTER

IV

The European Right and Professor Weber'sSpecial Assignment

To provide the reader with a better understanding of Ru-mania's position between World War I and World War II, and toenable him to understand not only what the Rumanian LegionaryMovement was but also what part that band of patriots played inRumanian affairs during that trying period, a short examination ofselections from a book entitled The European Right, a Historical Pro-file, seems now to be in order. Specifically I will discuss those parts ofthe book that deal with Rumania in general and the Legionary Move-ment in particular .

Edited by Professors Hans Rogger and Eugen Weber of the Universityof California, The European Right attempts to examine in ten essaysthe Rightist movement in England and on the Continent . Mr. Weberwrote the "Introduction" and the essay entitled "Romania ." Mr. Roggercontributed a piece called "Afterthoughts" in which he tried to explainwhat he and Weber mean by "Right" :

"Without wishing to impose our views and preferences," we wrote to ourcontributors, "we have yet had to make certain assumptions in order todelimit the meaning of 'Right' for present purposes, and hope that theseassumptions will be shared . They are that the Right is a phenomenon offairly recent history (i .e ., the last sixty to eighty years), that it is character-istically a postliberal (or postdemocratic) and postindustrial phenomenon,that as a reaction to the liberalization of political life it was more violentor radical than the conservative wish to preserve privilege or the status quo,and that it implied a readiness to conduct politics with some or all thetechniques and appeals introduced by the mass parties of democracy andthe Left, as well as some novel ones."'1 Hans Rogger, "Afterthoughts," in Hans Rogger and Eugen Weber, eds ., The

European Right, a Historical Profile (Berkeley and Los Angeles : University of Califor-nia Press, 1965), p . 575 .

25

26 / The Suicide o f Europe

Actually the Rightist movements studied in The European Right byten university professors under the sponsorship of the University ofCalifornia and other educational institutions all have one trait in com-mon: They were first of all anti-Communist movements . There is nodoubt that if Communism had not conquered Russia, if Moscow hadnot suddenly become the spiritual and temporal Mecca of a monstrousfaith and of a subtle, poisonous, insinuating and conquering power,those movements either would not have been born, or would have fol-lowed quite another evolution ; provoking less virulent hostilities, theywould have been themselves less violent in their expressions and re-actions .Anti-Communism being the common characteristic of the movements

under study, it would have been, we think, logically and intellectuallynecessary for this characteristic to be emphatically present in theirdefinition . However, by carefully chosen timing-"sixty" or "eighty"years ago, in 1965-the editors and contributors have at the onset ex-cluded not only from their definition, but also from their wholelearned investigation, multiple, fundamental, and essential elements oftruth . For instance :

1. The post-World War I Rightist movements have been, first of all,a spontaneous reaction against the Communist danger in all its formsand disguises .

2. Those movements owed their popularity, and sometimes theirexistence, to the inability of the established powers, on both domesticand foreign policy fields, to meet the Communist danger with appro-priate force and decision .

3. It was the strange and unexplained collusion between those es-tablished powers and the Communist world-on both domestic andforeign fields-that brought the major clashes between those powersand the young nationalist movements, and also brought the final clashbetween non-Communist countries .

4. The solidarity between the young nationalist movements of vari-ous European countries was based principally on their identical re-action to the Communist danger and to this unexplainable collusion,rather than on any absolute sameness of doctrines .

Without taking those elements of truth into consideration even anunbiased investigator could only have failed in his research . Take forinstance Corneliu Codreanu's declaration of November 30, 1937 : "Forty-eight hours after the victory of the Legionary Movement, Rumania willbe allied to Rome and Berlin, thus entering the line of its historicalworld-mission : the defense of the Cross, of Christian Culture and Civili-zation." The conclusion of the two connected pacts of military assistance

The European Right and Weber's Special Assignment / 27

between France and the Soviet Union and Czecho-Slovakia had occurreda year before Codreanu made that statement . These new instruments ofEuropean diplomacy, and the obvious acquiescence of the establishedpowers in Rumania to them, had suspended the Damoclean sword of aSoviet invasion over the country's very existence . Against such an inva-sion Rumania had no allies other than those governments and nationsfor which Soviet Russia and Communism were also the preeminentdanger and recognized enemies .

It has been objected that it was almost hypocritical for Codreanu toinvoke the defense of Christian Civilization in order to explain hisreadiness to conclude an alliance with National Socialist Germany andFascist Italy . For Codreanu, Christian Civilization and Western Civiliza-tion were one and the same thing ; the thing that Germany and Italyhad helped Franco in Spain to defend and save against the allied forcesof the Communist parties of all European countries, and against thecoalition of the Soviet Union and the Western Powers, the United Statesincluded .

A definition of the Legionary Movement could not limit itself, ofcourse, to the Movement's anti-Communist character . But reflection willshow that the source of most of its other traits is to be found also, if lessvisibly, in the sudden emergence of the Communist atrocity in the politi-cal, social, economic, and spiritual structure of Europe and of theworld; an emergence which created totally novel problems and situa-tions or greatly accentuated some of those already existing . The pro-found damage and lasting convulsions which afflicted this structure afterWorld War I were not to be attributed principally to the unavoidableconsequences of all wars. We had the instances of the Napoleonic warsand of the war of 1870 between France and Germany quickly followedby long periods of prosperity and tranquility for all the countries con-cerned. The source of the economic damage and social disorganizationof the Continent was the appearance on its Eastern borders of a menacethe equivalent of which it had never known before .Among those damages one of the most destructive was the deteriora-

tion, sometimes to almost nothingness, of the worth of so many Euro-pean currencies . If gold was fleeing from Europe, it was for fear of con-tagious and conquering Communism . For the countries involved thedisappearance of the metal coverings meant inflation, paralysis of theeconomic exchanges, insolvency of governments, reduction of the salariesof state employees to an unbearable minimum, rampant speculation andprofiteering, unavoidable corruption of moral standards, fateful devalu-ation of social and patriotic values. But for Rumania it meant alsosomething else : the disappearance of the Conservative Party, an his-

28 / The Suicide o f Europe

torical element of wisdom and morality . This fact radically influencedher political and social life, a circumstance to which we have already al-luded in a preceding chapter .The agrarian reform that had been presented to the Rumanian

Parliament during World War I by a coalition government of Lib-erals and Conservatives provided a reasonable indemnification for thelandlords based on the minimum worth of comparable arable landin the last ten years . The enforcement of this reform between 1917 and1921 brought ninety-two percent of Rumania's arable land in the handsof the peasants. But at that time devaluation of our currency hadbrought it to one-fiftieth of its nominal gold value . Moreover, the land-lords were not paid in this already almost worthless lei, but in bondswhich quickly fell to one-third of their nominal value in worthless lei .This reduced the landlords' indemnification to 1/150 of that intended bythe original legislator . This fraudulent implementation of the agrarianreform was carried out enthusiastically by the Liberal Party and by thenewly hatched political groups, the Populist and the National Peasantgroups, eager and happy to get rid of a rival and a censor .

This enormous fraud ruined indeed the very base and raison d'etreof the Conservative Party : the complete independence of the materialmeans of its leaders from political pursuits and from other worriesthan those for the public welfare and for the security and greatness ofthe fatherland. It was, therefore, quite another Rumania that CorneliuCodreanu and his young companions had to deal with than that of afew years before . The sacrifice of hundreds of them would not have beennecessary in order to prevent servile governments from promising freepassage over our territory to Soviet armies, or in order to make a quickend to the Carol-Lupescu regime of corruption and iniquity, if menlike Lascar Catargi, Petru Carp, Titus Maiorescu, Gheorghe Cantacu-zene, Ion and Jack Lahovary, Nicholae Filipescu, and Delavrancea hadstill been at the head of a powerful party with deep roots in the country'spast and a strong and natural attachment to the rural classes .

It is interesting to remark that it was Petru Carp, one of the mostdistinguished leaders of the Conservative Party, who, in an almostprophetic vision, foretold the emergence of a new movement under theleadership of a young chief, that would not be a copy but a continu-ation, adapted to changed situations, of the Conservative Party . CorneliuCodreanu's Movement would have been just that if fate had permittedit to be born in less tragic circumstances .

By deciding to start their investigation of the postwar nationalistphenomenon at a date prior to the end of the war and the birth ofBolshevik Russia, the learned editors of The European Right decidedby the same token to ignore the difference which was strikingly and

The European Right and Weber's Special Assignment / 29

painfully obvious to any person who had known both the pre-war andthe post-war Rumania . This permits Mr . Weber to vent his antipathy, orperhaps his hate, toward Rumania with a greater semblance of veracity.

In the meantime, it should be observed, Codreanu's mysticism did notexclude a very hard-headed appreciation of the situation . From a menda-cious people he demanded honesty, in a lazy country he demanded work,in an easy-going society he demanded self-discipline and persistence, froman exuberant and windy folk he demanded brevity and self-control?

It is from the same position of hostility that Professor Weber re-peatedly insists on a pretended similarity in the relations between "mas-ters" and working classes in Algeria and Peru, and those in Rumania,where the two social groups "belonged figuratively and sometimesliterally to two different nations." 3 He is silent about the enormoussacrifice in land and fortune made by the Rumanian "masters" for thebenefit of the Rumanian peasant (eighty percent of the Rumanianpopulation), a sacrifice which has had no equivalent among any othergroup of "masters" in the social history of any other country . 4 Verycharacteristically Professor Weber invokes as principal authority forhis metaphors, and his silences, the novels of the foreign-born PenaitIstraiti, heinous enemy of all that was Rumania ; a slum-dweller com-pletely ignorant of Rumanian country life and Rumanian history ; anotorious Communist and homosexual, whose works published in French(a language he did not know) were in a large measure ghost-written byFrench writers of the same ilk .

Concerning the Legionary Movement, Professor Weber also shows afondness for extra-European comparisons, appealing to "students ofAfrican history" and invoking the "messiahs of the Ba-Congo" and ofother dark recesses of darkest Africa in order to explain Corneliu Co-dreanu's prestige and the fidelity of his followers . 5 When such similesdo not appear convincing enough, the learned professor falls back onFreud, throwing around such phrases as "transfer-wish fulfillment" andother psychoanalytic gibberish .

Brasilach, the enthralling writer murdered ten years after Codreanuby the same hidden forces, the idol of those of the French youth forwhom "the most natural human society was the nation," and for whom

' Eugen Weber, "Romania," in The European Right, p . 537.' Ibid ., p . 504 .' The agrarian reform carried out in Japan under the reign of Emperor Mutsuhito

was comparable, in regard to the extention of arable land expropriated, to the lastRumanian agrarian reform, but it was soundly conceived and honestly applied andone of its consequences was the astonishing Japanese industrial development in thefollowing century.

' Ibid ., p . 523.

30 / The Suicide of Europe

Communism represented the decay and disintegration of any humansociety, was able in a few lines to go far deeper and more accuratelyinto this subject matter than Professor Weber was able to do in eighty-two pages :

Before the universal Communist menace, from the frozen Norwegianfiord to the red flatlands of Castille and the arid escarpments of Greece,all the peoples of Europe were awakening from a listless slumber to the cryof "Nations, arise!" In Rumania, Corneliu Codreanu was addressing hisLegionaries in rugged speeches full of picturesque poetry, appealing totheir honor and their spirit of self-sacrifice and discipline, trying to con-jure that state of inner enlightenment, present in all religious experiences,that he called "the national unity" and upon which he was founding theoriginal, the monastic, the military movement of the Iron Guard .

We quote here also a letter from Pastor Richard Wurmbrand, whogathered his information and his impressions from more reliable sourcesthan Professor Weber, addressed to a representative of the LegionaryCommand:

If you are like the Legionaries, whom I have seen dying with a last wordof love to God and to their fatherland upon their lips, you are my friends .God looks at the heart and even if you did not have the privilege to die amartyr as they, God appreciates your willingness to give your life wheneverit might be necessary for . . . our oppressed country . I have seen Legionarychildren like Gavrila~ and Ciubotea die as heroes . My wife was in prisonwith Mrs. Codreanu and Mrs . Mota. We know how many very valuable ele-ments are among you . Mocked by everybody, continue to believe and to loveand God will reward you . . . . Who could forget men of a legendary gran-deur like Gafencu,6 lanulidi, Tetea, Gavrilas, and others who won our re-spect-the respect of those who were not Legionaries and were not inagreement with the Legionaries in many ways . Some of them saved mylife . . . .

It would be unjust, perhaps, to ask from this new crop of intellectuals-victims, it seems, of a contagious brain-corroding pestilence that hasalready suffused Western universities with its materialistic, utilitarianand Marxist philosophy, to understand fully the notion of sacrifice fora principle, or for one's country, or of fidelity, even unto death, towardthe leader who incarnates this principle or represents better than any-body else the interests and destiny of that country.

For this new generation of "educators" and public opinion builders,religion is no better than magic; love and fear of God is superstition ;patriotism is an error ; nationalism is a crime ; self-sacrifice is masochism ;

9 No relation to Grigore Gafencu the former Minister of Foreign Affairs.

The author's parents .

Prince Nicolas Ghyka-Comanesti, Princess Sturdza's uncle, was decidedly a "bear uncle ."

Constantin Negri, the great Rumanian states-man, with the following dedication from theauthor's mother : "Love, like him, your coun-try above anything else ."

Comanesti Court, the estate of Princess Sturdza's grandfather .

seneral Prince Leon Mavrocordato, Princess3turdza's father.

Prince Eugene Ghyka, the grand-uncle ofPrincess Sturdza, fought with the UnionArmy during the American Civil War . Hiswife, Princess Jeanne Ghyka, who died in1954 at the age of ninety, was a sister ofQueen Nathalie of Serbia .

Prince John Sturdza (left), the author's brother, and Prince Alexis Mavrocordato (right),Princess Sturdza's brother . They were both killed in fighting Trotsky's armies .

Tescani, the colonial style estate of the author's aunt, Alice Rose tti-Tescani . This was asecond home for the author and his brothers, where in the winter drives many wolves werekilled, and where a library of more than ten thousand volumes helped the author, from hisearly years, satisfy his intellectual curiosity .

Four generations : Prince Dimitri Ghyka-Comanesti ; Princess Marie Mavrocordato, hisdaughter ; Princess Zoe Sturdza; and Prince Elie Vlad Sturdza, her son .

Princess Sturdza with her son .

Wedding in Comanesti, Princeand Princess Michel Sturdza .

Princess Sturdza with the headof a moose shot on a trip toCanada .

A typical Rumanian peasant family, from a painting by Mikl6s Barabas .

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Princess Zoe' Sturdza with her dog,Haiduc, a present from an Americanfriend .

Prince Elie Vlad Sturdza, the son of theauthor, with Haiduc in Riga in 1934 .

Riga : In front, the President of Latvia ; at his left, Princess ZoeSturdza ; back center,the author with other members of the diplomatic corp .

The European Right and Weber's Special Assignment / 31

love of the past is necromania ; an obeyed leader is a medicine man ; anddiscipline is a dark cult . Those people are, no doubt, sincere in theirdisbeliefs and in their beliefs also, when they care to exhibit them ; onecannot, therefore, berate them for the one or for the other . But we areallowed to be surprised when university professors, in a book whichassumes the form and the aspect of a methodical and didactic investiga-tion and which concerns itself with a highly controversial and angrilydisputed debate, instead of confronting opposing documentation, useonly material furnished by the declared adversaries of the politicalmovement being studied . The result could not have been any other,regarding Rumania and the Legionary Movement in any case, than toadd another stratum to the accumulation of slander and deliberate mis-information upon which condemnatory judgment have already beenpassed, and to give new luster and credit to testimonies which havelong ago been totally disproved . In this category, for instance, fall allthe "official documentation" furnished by General Antonescu againstthe activity of the Legionary Movement during the National LegionaryGovernment and under Horia Sima's leadership . It is exclusively uponthis "documentation" that Professor Weber based his final conclusionswith the simple qualification that the official data "were perhaps in-flated," when, indeed, they were entirely fabricated or perverted .

Horia Sima, the Commandant of the Legionary Movement, is alive .Professor Weber spent long hours with him asking and listening withapparent great interest . He might have taken into account Sima's first-hand and abundant information about so many controversial events,situations and attitudes, expressing, of course, his own dissent or hisdoubt if he felt it necessary . Not one line in Professor Weber's elaboratecomposition records or reflects such important data or statements ; thereis not one quotation from Sima's works, in English, Spanish, or Ruma-nian in a production in which even African sorcerers are quotedl Is thathonest academic research? Is that what the professor's sponsors, who nodoubt paid for his special trip to Spain, expected from him?

A Legionary text says that all great changes in human history areprovoked by the simultaneous occurrence of two events : a paroxysm inthe collective aspirations of some human group, and the appearance ofa creative personality, essentially representative of those aspirations,with enough spirituality to bring them to life, and with enough discern-ment to steer their course toward lasting realization .Such a person for Rumania was Corneliu Zelea-Codreanu . What the

text did not say, but what the Legionary Movement learned from bit-ter experience, is that almost by definition such a personality is fated todisappear violently, long before he sees the outcome of his toils and ofhis calvary.

32 / The Suicide of Europe

Wer darf das Kind beim rechten Nahmen nennen?Die wenigen die was davon erkanntDie toricht genug ihr voiles Herz nicht wahrten .Dent Pobel ihr Gefiihl, ihr Schauen offenbartenHat man von je gekreuzigt and verbrannt 7

For Rumania, two factors determined the paroxysm and the necessityfor fearless spiritual and realistic leadership: 1 . The realization of acenturies-old dream-the reconstruction almost in its entirety of theDacian empire and the reunion of all Rumanians under the same crown ;a realization that conjured in the soul of every young Rumanian all thespirit and the glories of the past. 2. The sudden emergence at our east-ern borders of a deadly menace to this miraculous reconstruction-amenace more repugnant, perhaps, to Rumanian mentality than to thatof any other nation .

It was in January 1918 that for the first time a group of Rumanianyoung people gathered around Codreanu, then nineteen years old . Thepurpose then was the same as that of all of Codreanu's later efforts : thedefense of the endangered country and of the spiritual and historicvalues which composed the texture of Rumania's existence . The Bol-shevized Russian Army was roaming around Moldavia and menacingIasi, the provincial capital, then the seat of the Court and of the Govern-ment. Codreanu and his young comrades of high school age decided toorganize a guerrilla war against the Communist enemy if serious hostil-ities should break out between Rumanian troops and their former al-lies .

In the following years, Codreanu while a student at the University ofIasi continued among students and workers his fight against insidiousCommunist ideas and infiltration. This time the fight was not againstforeign troops but against some of his own professors, against profes-sional agitators, and also partly against the authorities of the province .Helped by his friend, the workman Constantin Pancu, he founded theGuard of the National Conscience . In March 1922, before graduatingfrom the Iasi Faculty of Law, he organized the Association of ChristianStudents. Codreanu and twenty-six comrades in a solemn religious cere-mony bound themselves by what has been called the angajamentul deonoare ("pledge of honor")-to continue for the rest of their lives thenationalist fight they had started on the benches of the university-apledge to which many of them remained faithful even unto their deaths.

° But who dares call the child by its right name?The few who knowing something about itWere foolish enough not to guard it in their hearts .Those who have shown the people their feelings and their thoughtsHave been since always crucified or burned at the stake .

-Goethe, Faust I

The European Right and Weber's Special Assignment / 33

We think March 27, 1922, must be considered as the point of no returnin Codreanu's life and destiny .

After graduation Codreanu left for Berlin in order to complete hisstudies in political economy, but he returned hurriedly to Rumania toestablish some order among the numerous nationalist movements thathad sprouted in the country in his absence . He had to overcome greatdifficulties but finally succeeded in forming the League of NationalChristian Defense, LANG (Liga Apararei Nationale Crestine) fromforty-two sporadic nationalist movements whose forty-two banners weresolemnly blessed at the Iasi Metropolitan Cathedral. LANG was nomore a limited student movement but a national organization. TheLeague elected Professor Alexandru C. Cuza as president, who delegatedto Codreanu the mission of further organizing the movement through-out the whole country .For Codreanu and LANG there followed three years of continuous

and often violent agitation, caused in part by the mass naturalization ofmore than 500,000 Jews suddenly introduced by law into the organismof the nation, and in part by the corruption that had started to infectRumania's public life . Against LANG activities the most brutal andunjustified official reprisal was hurled. This was a time when independ-ence of the judiciary, strength of character, and civic courage still dwelledin Rumania. Public sympathy, public support, and incorruptible courtssided with the young nationalist movement against the iniquities and thecruel repression of the various Governments .Between 1923 and 1925 Codreanu established an indissoluble friend-

ship, fateful for the destiny of his Movement, with Ion Mota . Codreanualso organized the first working camp and the first "Brotherhoods ofthe Cross" among the younger of his disciples . It was also during thistime that he and his followers met with one of the cruelest chapters ofthe reign of terror to which they were to be continuously submitted.This chapter of the Legionary calvary has been called the "Manciu Ter-ror," named for the police commissioner of the city of Iasi to whomthe direction of the operation had been entrusted by the Liberal Gov-ernment then in power .Young men and young girls were imprisoned for no reason and

without any trial . They were humiliated, beaten, and tortured . One ofManciu's favorite performances was to hang his victims by their feetand submerge their heads in a bucket of water until they nearly drownedand then to repeat this treatment. Freed from such atrocities by theintervention of a group of influential people, the victims asked for thepunishment of Manciu and his accomplices for their criminal activities .The result was the criminal's promotion and decoration with ribbonsand orders . Let us hear Professor Weber himself on the subject :

34 / The Suicide o f EuropeThe first task which Codreanu set for himself and the members of his

brotherhoods was to build their own student center with bricks they madethemselves and money they raised by working in a market garden . But theauthorities suspected that their intentions were less specific than theyseemed, and the prefect of Iasi himself led the police and gendarmes tobreak up the group with great brutality. Arrested without apparent reasonwhile at their work, they were tied up with ropes, dragged through the streets,spat on, beaten, humiliated, and released only on the intervention of Cuzaand other leading citizens . Arbitrary beatings and arrests were hardly un-usual in Romania, but this was Codreanu's first experience of sheer injus-tice. An official inquiry which established the unwarranted arrests, beating,and torture of the schoolboys led only to the decoration of the prefect,Manciu, and the promotion of his principal assistants . . . .

Denied a hearing for his griefs, let alone any sanctions against the guilty,Codreanu now took the law into his own hands and shot Manciu downs

Let us observe Professor Weber's clever attempts at extenuating asmuch as possible Manciu's sadistic activities, and also the fact that hefails to mention that Codreanu's gesture of revolt was also an act ofself-defense. When Manciu and his stooges came to arrest him againCodreanu drew his gun and fired. Despite the persistent and illegalefforts of the authorities (who twice changed the seat of the trial inorder to find a more pliable court), Codreanu was acquitted by twelvejurymen who returned to the courtroom "sporting on their lapels theLANC emblem . . . ." s "Codreanu was not only acquitted but vindi-cated," 10 relates Professor Weber. "On the way back to Iasi, the peas-ants gathered to cheer him . . . priests blessed him, and in the citiesgreat crowds filled the railroad stations with flowers and songs ."" Ru-mania at that time was still Rumania, and not what years of corruptionand submission to the orders of the Unnamed Powers were to makeher. However much Manciu had deserved his fate, however much Co-dreanu was supported in his action by his compatriots, those who knewCodreanu knew also that he never justified to himself the shooting ofManciu, whose death left an ineradicable shadow upon his thoughts .

About 100,000 persons gathered in Focsani to attend Codreanu's wed-ding, and in a neighboring village one hundred newborn peasant chil-dren were gathered to be baptised with him as godfather . Back in Iasihe took the necessary measures in order to complete the building inter-rupted by his arrest . But eager to have some time elapse between hisfuture activities and what had just happened, he left with Mota forthe University of Grenoble in order to continue his studies, and aftertwo years there he graduated in political economy .

8 Weber, op . cit ., p. 525 . Italics added.9 Ibid., p. 526.1O Ibid."Ibid.

The European Right and Weber's Special Assignment / 35

Once again in Rumania, Codreanu tried to reconstruct the LANG,which had disintegrated after his departure . He failed in his efforts andasked Professor Cuza for authorization to leave the League and tofound his own organization . On June 24, 1927, the Legion of the Arch-angel Michael was founded . The Legion was organized into cuibi ("nests")of not less than three Legionaries but not more than thirteen . When anest seemed sufficiently strong, three of its members would start theformation of another . The spreading of nests all over the country fol-lowed and the Legion grew rapidly in the following years . To hisLegionaries Codreanu was the Captain, and his authority was unques-tioned . This is what the Captain says about it: "The Legionary Move-ment is not founded exclusively on the principle of authority nor onthat of liberty, but on the principle of love . Love cannot breed tyrannyand injustice, nor sanguinary revolutions and social wars ."

The educational methods of the nests are clearly stated by the sixfundamental laws written in the manual of the nest-chiefs :

1 . The Law of Discipline : Legionary be obedient; without discipline wewill not win. Follow your chief for better or worse .

2. The Law of Work : Do your daily work . Work with joy. Let the rewardof your work be not any material profit, but the satisfaction that youhave contributed something to the glory of the Legion and the greatnessof your country.

3. The Law of Silence : Talk little . Talk only when you must . Your elo-quence is in deeds . Let others talk ; you act .

4. The Law of Education: You must become another man . A hero .5. The Law of Assistance : Help your brother in distress . Do not abandon

him.6. The Law of Honor : Follow only the ways shown by honor. Fight. Never

be a coward. Leave to others the ways of infamy . Better fail fighting theway of honor, than to conquer by infamy .

From the field of student agitation, the Legionary Movement in June1931, passed for the first time to that of the electoral conflict, a fieldupon which it encountered in an unequal and cruel fight an enemywith which it had had until then only skirmishes : the politician . Fromprison to prison, from torture to torture, from illegal dissolution toillegal dissolution, the Legionary Movement reached the election of1932 more powerful and more antagonized than it had ever been . Itnow had an alternate designation, the Iron Guard, which reflected theincrease in the amount of fortitude and steadfastness asked from theLegionaries in order to face the new wave of persecutions . Indeed, bydecree of the Liberal Government presided over by Ion Duca, "thepolitical group known under the name of the Legion of the ArchangelMichael, or the Iron Guard, or the Group Zelea-Codreanu" was dis-solved on December 10, 1933 .

36 The Suicide of Europe

Meanwhile a new and invaluable partner had joined the ranks ofthe Iron Guard, General Gheorghe Cantacuzene, the most admired,the most beloved, the most heroic of the leaders of the Rumanian Armyduring World War I . It was with the General at their side that Co-dreanu and the Legionary Movement faced the Duca terror ; the cruelestthe Movement had had to endure up to that point . By the thousandsLegionaries were arrested, beaten, and tortured . Twelve of them werekilled by Duca's police before three of their comrades took the law intotheir own hands and on December 29, 1933, killed Duca in the Sinaiarailway station and then immediately gave themselves up to the police .

The Government brought all the Legionary chiefs before a militarycourt, together with the three murderers, and asked that all of them besentenced as accomplices. The prosecutor for the State was GeneralPetrovicescu, a man who had at that time absolutely no connectionwith the Iron Guard, but who eight years later was to share with itanother part of its calvary and was to die in prison for its cause . Refus-ing to take into account all the pressures to which he was submitted-including an order from King Carol-Petrovicescu limited his indict-ment to the three murderers and declared that after careful investiga-tion he was convinced that none of the leaders of the Legionary Move-ment were aware of the murderers' intentions nor had any responsibilityconcerning the murder in the Sinaia railway station .

Professor Weber thinks he knows better . Here is his account of thisdrama :

On December 10, 1933, at the height of yet one more electoral campaign,the ruling Liberal government, responding to its western allies' fears of afascist agitation, again dissolved the Guard . In the ensuing persecution,half a dozen legionaries were killed and hundreds were imprisoned untilthe elections had been held and the Liberals had secured the desired ma-jority. On December 29, three legionaries "punished" I . G. Duca, thepremier responsible for this, by shooting him down at point-blank rangeon a railroad station platform, and then gave themselves up . [There weretwelve, not half a dozen, killed . Thousands were imprisoned and tortured,not hundreds. They were kept in prison for several months .]When Duca had signed the decree that dissolved the Legion and kept it

from the polls, General Gheorghe Cantacuzino [Cantacuzene] (1869-1937),an old follower of Averescu's Popular Party who had since joined Codreanu,had written him, "You have signed your will." Although Duca's murderersseem to have planned their coup alone, they were encouraged to do it-if not put up to it-by the General . Codreanu, though he endorsed theiract post facto, always claimed he had no knowledge of it . Even if that weretrue, the moral responsibility for this and other acts of murder and mayhemmust be placed at his door .12

I Ibid ., p. 547 . Italics added.

The European Right and Weber's Special Assignment / 37Regarding General Cantacuzene's supposed participation in Duca's

murder, Professor Weber has given us a perfect instance of quotes clev-erly isolated from their context . General Cantacuzene was an old andgood friend of Prime Minister Duca, toward whom, as toward manyof his friends, he was inclined to assume a blunt fatherly attitude . Theletter quoted by Professor Weber was, of course, one of the principalexhibits at the trial, where it was read in extenso and correctly inter-preted as a pressing warning to a friend from one who knew at firsthand the intensity of the indignation raised among the Legionary massesby the assassination of their comrades and the increasing cruelty of theDuca terror .

Concerning Codreanu's supposed complicity in the Duca crime or inthe "other acts of murder and mayhem [which] must be placed at hisdoor," Professor Weber could have easily avoided the fault of misin-formation (remembering that Codreanu had never lied or tried to foolanybody) by reading in its original text the precept of non-violence onwhich the Captain had based the Legionary Movement after his depar-ture from the LANC and his farewell to the period of student agitationthat had preceded the Manciu murder and trial . We quote from PentruLegionari, the book in which Codreanu had determined the way of lifeand the way of action for the new movement he had created :

The Legionary Movement will never resort to complot or a coup in orderto win. By the very essence of our beliefs we are against conspiracy . Thiswould mean violence of an outward character, while we expect victoryfrom an inner realization of the nation's soul .We have walled ourselves inside a framework of perfect order and

legality, so as to be above any reproach . We will follow the line of thecountry's laws without provoking anybody, without answering to anyprovocation. But do not believe that this will be of any avail . The wayour governments think is this: "We cannot destroy you under the pretextthat you have violated our laws ; therefore, we will violate our laws anddestroy you. You have decided not to be `illegal'? Well, we will be illegalfor you." So, we have been locked up in a purely diabolical system : Weare accused by the press and all the official media of propaganda, of viola-ting the law, and it is just because we maintain ourselves unshakenly inthe framework of the law that our adversaries are able to crush us in themost cruel way.

They try to throw us out of that state of legality into one of violence .But we won't allow ourselves to be pushed into that position. We havedecided to act in the framework of the law . We do not want to use force.We do not want to use violence .

At a later time, in February 1938, in a circular to the members of hisMovement, which had presented itself at recent elections under thename of the All for the Country Party, Codreanu stated :

38 / The Suicide of Europe

To all concerned: the All for the Country Party does not exist anymore. All those presently belonging to the Legionary Movement are re-leased from their bonds. All the offices of the Movement are abolished .

We do not want any more of the experiences of the past, when contraryto our will we have been pushed onto the road of violence. We won'tanswer violence any more . We will accept any brutality even if the wholenation is treated as a herd of livestock . We won't revolt, because we havethe conscience of our mission and of our responsibility . We won't, throughirrational action, make of our country another bleeding Spain .

Our generation sees the gauntlet that has been thrown before it. Wewon't take it up . The hour of our victory has not yet struck . This is thehour of others. If the generation of our predecessors think that they aredoing right, we won't try to prove them wrong . They have the responsibil-ity of their actions before God and before history .

It was after the Captain had thus disbanded his organization, andon the eve of his departure for Italy, that he was once more arrested .Before leaving for another prison, the soaked casemates of Jilava, wherea few months later his tortured body would be brought back and buriedunder several tons of concrete, the Captain had the opportunity topass to his family a few sheets from which we extract these followinglines :

Wednesday, June 15, 1938-When I had finished the reading of theGospel, I understood that I was in this prison by the will of God, thathowever innocent I was according to human justice, he punished me formy sins and put my faith to test . I calmed down; serenity descended uponthe torments of my soul, as the serenity of the evening descends upon theagitation and the passions of this world. For, I have been cruelly tortured .My poor flesh has suffered much . I don't think that I have ever sufferedso much. I have not lost faith and love, but I felt at one moment that Ihad lost any tie with hope . Physically tortured like a beast, my clothes arefilled only with aches . For sixty nights I have been sleeping on theseplanks. Sixty days and nights, that my bones absorb like a sponge themoisture that oozes from floor and walls .For two months I have not exchanged a word with anybody, as every-

body here is forbidden to talk to me. Manacled and stricken, without anypossibility to defend myself. I am declared foreign to my nation, and anenemy of the state. With my heart oppressed, thinking of the sufferings ofmy family and of so many of my comrades, I felt that in me one of thelinks between man and God had broken : hope . . . .Friday night, June 17, 1938-Half an hour ago my lawyers came and

told me that my appeal to the court of cassation had been denied . Allof them were mournful and dispirited . I stayed with them about fifteenminutes. I asked them about the court hearings . They answered with afew words, and we parted .

I went back to my cell, sat on the planks of my bed and prayed : OurFather Who art in Heaven, Thy will be done .13

m "It is hard to tell whether, with Codreanu once put away, the King and his pre-mier, Calinescu, really intended his death," says Professor Weber (op. cit., p . 554) . He

The European Right and Weber's Special Assignment / 39

If one remembers that, with the Captain, hundreds of leaders of theMovement had been arrested in the capital and in the provinces, andwhen one tries to realize the turmoil and anger that had broken loosein the souls of the Legionary masses, deprived momentarily of anyleadership, one can only wonder that more disorders had not occurredat the time of the last arrest and of the iniquitous verdict that sentCodreanu to his last prison-than the limited happenings in Cluj, am-plified and used by many commentators, and by Professor Weber also,to explain and even excuse the murder of the Captain . The readers ofthis book will have the opportunity to form their own opinion aboutthe subject .A few words more about those commentators. It has been their prac-

tice to grant a certain measure of understanding and compassion forthe Legionary leaders who have passed away, generally victims of violentdeaths. Professor Weber followed the routine concerning Codreanu.But this indulgence toward the dead is often only a way to win morecredit for the denunciation and slander of those alive, especially of theleaders.

Denunciation is directed very naturally today to the present Com-mandant of the Movement, Horia Sima, as it had been directed toCodreanu, Mota, and others when they were alive. And here ProfessorWeber's insinuations are sometimes qualified as in the case of the trou-ble in Cluj, where he admits somewhat reluctantly, that Horia Simatried to prevent it . They are sometimes even contradicted by his owntext, as in the case of the pretended Legionary insurrection againstGeneral Antonescu . "The Legion's `rebellion' was actually its resistanceto a coup by its governmental partner [General Antonescu] to eliminateit from power," 14 says Professor Weber . That throws the burden of thistragedy in Rumania's history and of all its consequences where it be-longs: upon the shoulders of General Antonescu . That the learned pro-

discreetly prepared this attempt at minimizing Carol's and Cklinescu's infamy bythe utterly misleading information that Codreanu had "refused . . . to leave thecountry" (Ibid ., p. 552) . Far from refusing to leave the country, Codreanu, who hadannounced that he was leaving for Italy with the intention of spending several yearsthere, already had his passport visaed by the Rumanian authorities and by theItalian Consulate, and his tickets and that of his family booked, when at the lastmoment his passport was confiscated by Calinescu's police and he was arrested, neverto be free again. If Carol and CAlinescu had only wanted him "put away," to useProfessor Weber's words, it would have been easy enough for them to let the Captainleave. It is not hard to understand why Professor Weber omits this important episode,one pebble among the avalanche of misinformation by omission and commission inhis script, for this one instance suffices by itself to show what exactly was the taskassigned to Professor Weber by his generous sponsors-the American Council ofLearned Studies, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, and the Re-search Grants Commission of the University of California .'* Weber, op . cit., p . 566.

40 / The Suicide of Europe

fessor adds : "There is every reason to suppose that legionaries hadconsidered a coup of their own, but Antonescu beat them to it," 15 with-out giving any of those reasons, is too much in the natural line of the"twistorians" of every epoch to chide him for it.The same contradiction between facts and Professor Weber's allega-

tions might be often detected by anyone just from Weber's own text,as for instance when Professor Weber suggests that, contrary to whatwas occurring under Codreanu's leadership, under Sima the Legion was"a conscious agent" of National Socialist Germany . Under Codreanu,as well as under Sima, the Movement had always jealously kept itsindependence from any foreign influence . But it was under Sima thatthis attitude of independence provoked the greatest difficulties betweenthe Movement and Germany, difficulties which reached the point ofopen conflict, even according to Professor Weber's narrative itself, andled to the imprisonment in Germany of about four hundred Legionar-ies, among whom were Sima himself and the principal leaders of theMovement. They were "held in gentle confinement by the Germans,"says Professor Weber, which is a deliberate falsehood . As everybodyknows, it was in the concentration camps of Dachau and Buchenwaldthat these Legionaries were confined until the last months of the war .It was from there that they surged to take arms against the Communistenemy, to save at least the honor of a betrayed army and a betrayedcountry .

This book is not a history of the Legionary Movement, although Imight be tempted sometime to write it, even without the generoussponsorship of a "liberal" university or of the Guggenheim Founda-tion; but a history of the part Rumania played in the events that haveled the world to the last great war between non-Communist powers .What will follow will unavoidably bring Codreanu and his Move-ment into the focus of this narrative and to the attention of the reader .I would like, however, to try to answer here a question that has oftenbeen asked me : What now? Does the Movement still exist as an opera-ting organization? Has it not been completely annihilated by the fiercenew repression to which it has been submitted by the Communistregime?

We are not concerned here with what is left in Rumania of the Le-gion of the Archangel Michael. What we are anxious to see is the hourat which it will become evident that every Rumanian has become aLegionary. For we firmly believe that as long as such a transformationhas not occurred, in Rumania and the other enslaved countries, andeven among the masses of all Western non-Communist countries, the

15 Ibid.

The European Right and Weber's Special Assignment / 41

danger of a universal Communist victory is constantly around thecorner.

In what concerns more specifically Rumania and the Legionary Move-ment, I cannot do better than quote the following words of the Captain :

Then, we will accept death . Our blood will run . We have lived withdeath as a thought and a decision and we have always had thereby thecertitude of victory . Our victory will not be life but resurrection!

PART TWO

Titulescu,the Enemy's Agent

The catalogue of his acquaintances . . . wouldthrow a curious light on those subterranean agenciesof which the world in general knows so little, butwhich exercise so great an influence on public events .

"So you see, my dear Coningsby, that the world isgoverned by very different personages from what isimagined by those who are not behind the scenes ."

DISRAELIConingsby

I strive not to throw Europe into this criminal ad-venture. But the states, even the British crown, arenot the masters of their destiny . Powers that elude usare promoting in Great Britain, as in other coun-tries, special interests and an aberrant idealism .

Stanley BALDWINFrom a speech in the House of Commons

Mount Vernon, October 24, 1798Reverend Sir:

It was not my intention to doubt that the doctrineof the Illuminati, and the principles of Jacobinism,had [sic] not spread in the United States . On thecontrary, no one is more satisfied of this fact than Iam.

The idea I meant to convey was that I did not be-lieve the Lodges of Freemasons in this country had,as societies, endeavored to propagate the DIABOL-ICAL tenets of the former, or the PERNICIOUSprinciples of the latter, IF THEY ARE SUSCEP-TIBLE OF SEPARATION . That individuals ofthem may have done it, or that the founder, or in-struments employed to found the DEMOCRATICsocieties in the United States may have had thisobject, and actually had a separation of the peoplefrom their government in view, IS TOO EVIDENTTO BE QUESTIONED.*

With respect, I remain, Sir, etc. . . .

George WASHINGTON

From Washington, The Manand the Mason, by CharlesCallahan 1913 .

* Capitals added by Callahan .

CHAPTER

V

Riga and the Pacts of Nonaggression

When I took over the direction of the recently created Ru-manian Legation in Riga, Latvia, in November 1929 and for two yearsthereafter, Rumania was in the happy situation of not having diplo-matic (nor any other) relations with the Soviet Union and no rail orroad contact with her . We were the only neighbor of Soviet Russia thathad kept untouched the barbed-wire barrier which, had it become ageneral policy of the Western Powers, would have promptly put anend to the existence of this apocalyptical apparition . News from Soviet-land reached us only through the diplomatic and intelligence servicesof our allies, especially France and Poland.

The chief mission of our new Legation in Riga was to make up forthis important and detrimental lack of information. In order to simplifymy task I had been accredited to the Estonian Government and later tothe Finnish Government, simultaneously. The choice of the Balticcapitals as watchposts for what was happening and brewing in SovietRussia was most appropriate . These regions had been a part of the Rus-sian Empire; their statesmen, their intelligentsia, their civilian andmilitary officials, were familiar with the ambiance and the mentality oftheir former country . Although the Baltic states had been for a shortbut tragic period occupied by murderous Soviet gangs, they maintaineddiplomatic relations with Soviet Russia, toward which they had the sameapprehensive and mistrusting attitude as we .

During all my activity in Riga, Reval, and Helsinki, I had the benefitof the great mass of information of the three Governments and of theirintelligent and experienced interpretation of the reports that reachedus. Another interesting source of information was the legation of theUnited States. This country, like Rumania, having at that time nodiplomatic relations with Soviet Russia, was in an especially favorable

45

46 / The Suicide o f Europesituation regarding its intelligence service . Indeed, hundreds and eventhousands of American technicians and workers, placed at the disposalof Soviet Russia by Washington, in order to build up her heavy industryand therefore her military potential, were passing through the Balticports when leaving or entering Soviet territory . Each of these travelershad something to tell, even if it was only about the atmosphere whichsurrounded him in a Communist country .

Concerning my own reports to Bucharest, I will mention only thatthey insistently and repeatedly mentioned the Soviets' enormous effortsto build up their military capacity at the price of any sacrifice fromtheir unhappy people .

Because Rumania's diplomatic personnel were forbidden to give outpress releases or statements, it was my son, then fifteen years old, whotranslated and annotated for the Rumanian public a German book thatwas extremely informative regarding the increasing Soviet military possi-bilities. This book was all the more interesting because at that timeGerman military experts at the military academy in Moscow were es-tablishing the military doctrine of Stalin's budding armies. When ascandalous affair, involving embezzlement, temporarily deprived ourarmies of the heavy and light artillery that the Czecho-Slovak Skodafactories were building for us, I could not resist the impulse of inform-ing not only our Foreign Office but also the Rumanian public of theincreasing possibilities of action by our gigantic neighbors; and Ipassed, over my initials, two articles to the Rumanian press entitled, if Iremember correctly, "Shall We Be Caught again without Arms?" 1

It was about that time that a false alarm of not well-identified originwas spread concerning an imminent Soviet surprise attack. A wiredcircular from our Foreign Office to all our diplomatic agencies abroadasked us for all the information we could gather on that subject . In aconsidered answer I reassured our Government that I was convincedthat Soviet intentions toward their neighbors were not of an immediateimpulsive nature but were developed over a long period of time andcalled for, besides, a long political and diplomatic preparation, uponwhich the Soviets had just embarked .Mr. Gheorghe Mironescu, our Foreign Minister, who had summoned

me to Bucharest, informed me that the alarm of our Government wasall the greater since Russian aggression would have caught us-thanksto the Skoda scandal-in a dangerous state of unpreparedness . He sus-pected the Skoda industry of having spread the misleading alert inorder to induce us to accept their faulty material . He informed me alsothat King Alexander of Yugoslavia had spontaneously offered to us thelI have described in my book Avec I'Armee Roumaine the state of complete dis-

armament into which the Rumanian Army was thrown during World War I .

Riga and the Pacts o f Nonaggression / 47

excellent artillery material that the same company was about to deliverto the Yugoslav Army. Our War Department, for motives unknown,declined King Alexander's offer .

It was, I think, my reports about the situation in Soviet Russia andabout the likely unfolding of their next diplomatic activity whichprompted the new Rumanian Government in 1931 to select me as itsRepresentative at the Rumanian-Soviet negotiations, concerning a pactof nonaggression .

Before relating the story of those negotiations and of the subsequentevents in Rumania, I would like to recall to the reader's memory howextensively the friendly relations between the Western Powers andSoviet Russia had developed at that time .The present apostles of coexistence as a newly publicized way of

reaching a real and durable peace between the Communist and the non-Communist world choose to forget the attitude of benevolent tolerancepracticed almost without interruption by the Western Powers towardthe Communist monstrosity since the first years of the USSR's existence .They take particular care to forget the first experience in proclaimedfriendly coexistence, which will be described in this and following chap-ters, with all its fatal consequences .

Two very simple directives had governed Soviet foreign policy from1918 until 1939 : 1 . There could not be a more favorable climate for thecause of the world revolution than a war between bourgeois countries ;2. In order to keep alive the possibility of such a war, the Soviets mustalways fall in line with the nation which without Soviet assistancewould have felt unable to resort eventually to arms .

Lenin had given us fair warning :

In the pursuit of our aim we can afford, with our power of destruction,to collaborate with some capitalist governments . . . . We can even concludealliances with them in order to lure them into a false feeling of security .When their government, relying upon our support, throws itself into Ido not know what mad adventure, we will let them fall, and we will buildour empire upon their ruins .

It is in keeping with those principles that we have seen the followingSoviet diplomatic maneuvers :

1 . After Versailles and the disintegration of Germany's military es-tablishment, the USSR signed the surprise Rapallo agreement withGermany; and thus began the Chicherin-Rantzau policy . 2'The Allied and Associated Powers met with Soviet delegates in Genoa in April

1922 in order to discuss the possibilities of economic exchanges between East andWest. The Soviet delegates showed no special interest in these talks, but meanwhilethey were secretly negotiating with German delegates in a neighboring city, Rapallo .These latter negotiations came to a quick conclusion : the Treaty of Rapallo between

48 / The Suicide of Europe

2. When the efforts of National Socialism, an Italian alliance, andPolish friendship had made again of Germany the first military andpolitical power on the continent, Russia inaugurated what Dimitrovcalled the Trojan Horse policy-she entered the League of Nations,signed a pact of nonaggression and friendship with her neighbors, andmade a pact of mutual military assistance with France and Czecho-Slovakia .

3. Finally, when the combination of the rupture between Berlin andWarsaw, the reluctance of Mussolini, the opposition of Goring and theGenerals of the Reichswehr, plus the unmistakable stand taken by theUnited States, might have prompted Hitler to a milder or slower courseof action, Russia signed the Ribbentrop-Molotov Agreement-withWorld War II as a consequence .

Panic struck, therefore, the diplomatic and military circles in Mos-cow, at the growing possibility during the first years of the Thirties ofa new four-power pact between France, Germany, Italy, and GreatBritain which might reassert and complete, with the successors ofStresemann, 3 the Locarno Pact . 4 These memoirs will show how closeEurope and the world came to getting the priceless benefits of such adiplomatic instrument, which would have been the best guarantee of adurable peace between non-Communist powers; they will also show allthe exertions made by some Western quarters in order to help theSoviets avoid such an impasse .

Potemkin, one of the Kremlin's official historians, wrote in his His-tory of Soviet Diplomacy, "The new attitude of the Soviet Government(the pacts of nonaggression, the entrance into the League of Nations,etc.) . . . had as motives the necessity to thwart the project of a four-power pact ." The first tactical aim of this new policy was the renewalof the Franco-Russian alliance of the pre-World War I period, a master-

Germany and Soviet Russia. This was a bitter surprise for the Western negotiatorsin Genoa-a prefiguration of the Ribbentrop-Molotov Agreement of 1939 .The Treaty of Rapallo provided for a reciprocal renunciation of all financial war

claims, resumption of diplomatic and consular relations, and the application of most-favored-nation economic exchange . It also provided for "mutual feelings of good will ."As a result, Germany was allowed to produce, in Soviet factories, the types of arma-ment forbidden to her by the Versailles Treaty, thus probably putting the blueprintsof these arms at the disposal of the Soviet High Command .

8 Gustav Stresemann was the German Foreign Minister who negotiated the 1925Locarno Pact. Moscow feared a renewal, either in fact or in spirit, of the Pact .'This treaty was the result of meetings of Germany, France, Great Britian, Italy,

and Belgium in Locarno, Switzerland . There these powers came to an agreementwhich maintained the territorial status quo created by the Versailles Treaty, gaveGermany certain moral satisfaction and prestige, and established a solidarity con-cerning the respect of treaties and preservation of peace. It was guaranteed by theLeague of Nations and came into effect September 14, 1926 . It was by this treaty thatthe Rhineland was demilitarized .

Riga and the Pacts o f Nonaggression / 49

stroke that was sure to preclude any further rapprochement betweenGermany and France and even to provoke an explosive reaffirmation oftheir traditional hostility.

The principal difficulty for Russian diplomacy, besides the generaldistrust among the rightist and centrist members in the French Parlia-ment, lay in the terms and spirit of Franco-Polish and the Franco-Ru-manian military and political arrangements, which practically forbadenot only a military alliance but even any radical change in the statusof the Franco-Soviet relations without Poland and Rumania's consent .Very influential leftist circles in France, headed by Edouard Herriotand Premier Leon Blum, were fighting violently against the new four-power pact proposed by Mussolini and openly favored by Great Britainand Germany.

Writing memoirs was for Sir Winston Churchill what plucking the lutewas for Nero on that fabulous night . We wonder if sometimes his mindtook him back to that turbulent session in the British Parliament whenRamsay MacDonald, the Prime Minister, returned from Rome, and SirJohn Simon, Minister of Foreign Affairs, presented to the House thetext of the four-power pact on which they had agreed with Mussolini .Sir Winston rose in wrath at that session and opposed with his well-known eloquence, a diplomatic instrument that might have spared theworld from the war that brought the disintegration of the BritishEmpire .

The forces in France that opposed a new Franco-Russian allianceargued very naturally the incompatibility of such an alliance with theinterests of Poland and Rumania-France's principal allies on the con-tinent-at least as long as an improvement in the relations betweenthose two countries and their big neighbor had not been reached . Withsuch an alliance a possibility and with the thesis of the leftist circlesprevailing in France, Poland was asked by France to start discussingwith the Soviets the terms of a nonaggression pact . Marshal Jozef Pil-sudski accepted reluctantly the French suggestion, but with the con-dition sine qua non that the Soviets should first come to a similar agree-ment with Rumania .

Such was the situation at the first attempt of coexistence when in thewinter of 1931-1932 I was unexpectedly informed in Riga, Latvia, byPrince Dimitri Ghyka, our Minister of Foreign Affairs, that discussionsregarding a Rumanian pact of nonaggression would start forthwith andthat I was in charge of the Rumanian side of the negotiations . I say"unexpectedly" because a short time before, in Bucharest, I had reachedwith King Carol and Dimitri Ghyka the conclusion that the best rela-

50 / The Suicide of Europe

tion we could have with our Communist neighbor was no relation atall .

I was informed also that Mr . Maxim Litvinov had solemnly promisedHerv6 Alphand, the French Ambassador to Moscow, that the questionof Bessarabia would not be in any way discussed by the Soviet negotia-tor. Bessarabia, the eastern half of Moldavia, had been forcibly takenfrom us by Imperial Russia in three successive operations, in 1812, 1856,and 1878. We had recovered it at the end of World War I .

A few hours after his arrival in Riga, Ambassador Stomoniakov, theSoviet delegate, came to the Rumanian Legation and our negotiationsbegan. I had already prepared in a text of six articles a paraphrase ofother pacts of nonaggression and of the Kellogg Pact-a pact that I hadsigned with the same skepticism with which I was starting these Ruma-nian-Russian discussions .Mr. Stomoniakov, after a long examination of the proposed text, in-

formed me that even if only for esthetic reasons every pact should havea preamble. An admirer, myself, of well-balanced diplomatic literature,I approved the idea and asked him to make his suggestions .The following dialogue ensued :STOMONIAKOV: "You do not ignore, my dear colleague, the fact

that the Soviet Government has never recognized your eastern frontiersnor the conquest of Bessarabia by your troops . . . .STURDZA (Interrupting abruptly) : "I have never heard that such

pretensions existed from the side of your Government . I don't knowwhat you mean by Bessarabia ; 5 if such a province existed I would cer-tainly have been informed about it . But what I know very well is thatwithout a solemn promise given by Mr . Litvinov to Mr. Alphand wewould not be here negotiating, you and I ."STOMONIAKOV: "I know what you mean. But it is just in compli-

ance with that promise that I wish to insert in the preamble that thequestion of your eastern frontiers won't be mentioned ."STURDZA (Trying to hide his great admiration for that piece of

Soviet casuistry) : "Mr. Ambassador, any insistence in that directionwould force me to interrupt immediately our negotiations . I have, how-ever, a proposal to make . Let us forget for now the preamble, to whichwe can come back later, and start discussing the text of the pact proper ."

After a delay of twenty-four hours, and contacts with his Government,Stomoniakov accepted my suggestion. I had a very definite plan : It wasnecessary to show the French and Polish Governments that we weredoing our best to comply with their wishes and that the impossibility

s "Bessarabia" means the country of the Basarabs . The Basarabs were the oldestRumanian dynasty . It was a name given by the Tartars and the Turks to what waseastern Moldavia, but the term was not used by the Moldavians themselves .

-Riga and the Pacts of Nonaggression / 51

of coming to an understanding with the Kremlin was entirely due tothe crookedness of its policy .

In five sessions, each of which ended with a protocol signed by bothnegotiators, I succeeded without any great difficulty in establishing aperfect pact of nonaggression with my Soviet partner. But when at ourfinal meeting Mr. Stomoniakov reminded me that we had also to agreeupon the text of a preamble, I refused further discussions and suggestedthat we send to our respective governments for approval the text onwhich we had agreed .

Stomoniakov left the Rumanian Legation in a rage, and half an hourlater I received a letter from him dealing fully with the question ofBessarabia and of our eastern frontiers. After making a copy of it forthe use of my Government, I returned it to the Soviet Legation with thecomment that I had not found any place for it in my files .

Russia's Trojan Horse venture was at a stalemate-all the more so asboth the French and the Polish Governments, whose representatives inRiga, Jean Tripier and Miroslav Arciczewski, had backed me loyallyduring my boresome palaver with the Soviet mouthpiece, continued toassure us of their unfaltering support and of the fact that they wouldnot accept any new commitment with Soviet Russia as long as she didnot give us an unqualified guarantee of her peaceful intentions .

I must confess that I was rather satisfied with myself . I had left myGovernment in the strongest possible position, under the circumstances,and the Soviet Government in the position of either having to acceptour uncompromising terms or to give up, at least for a while, its newfraudulent policy in which I saw a mortal danger for my country .

My optimism had not taken into account certain very special circum-stances in our domestic political life and the imminent conjunction ofthe interests and ambitions of two rather notorious personalities: thematrimonial ambitions of Madame Magda Lupescu, the slightly overfedPompadour of Rumania's decadence ; and the political interest of Nico-lae Titulescu, who was Rumania's Ambassador-at-Large-the fair hairedboss of the League of Nations and a high-priced international "callgirl ." 6

Crown Prince Carol, after having married the charming Princess Hc%Me of Greece,suddenly abandoned her and their son Michael and eloped with a woman of uncertainreputation-Magda or Elena Wolff alias Lupescu-with whom he lived until hisdeath. As this was not Carol's first escapade, his parents, King Ferdinand and QueenMarie, backed by the responsible statesmen, decided to proclaim Carol's son MichaelCrown Prince. At the death of King Ferdinand, Michael was proclaimed King, witha Council of Regency to control Rumania's affairs until his majority . Many peoplein Rumania had kept their sympathy for Carol, hoping that he would return toPrincess He1ene, his wife, who was well loved by everybody . Carol returned, proclaimedhimself King and demoted his son to the rank of Voevod ; but it was Magda Lupescu,not Princess Heli ne, who de facto, shared the throne with Carol.

CHAPTERVI

Titulescu to the Rescue

The Trojan Horse policy-the tactic newly adopted by theKremlin in order to ward off the danger of a reinforced coalition of thenon-Communist powers-had been stopped in its tracks, at least for awhile, in Riga .

Indeed, the conclusion of a Rumanian-Soviet pact of nonaggressionwas the obligatory prelude to any similar arrangement between theSoviets and their other neighbors : Poland, the Baltic States, and Fin-land. And without such an arrangement, the conclusion of any militaryunderstanding between the Soviets and France-the final goal of theKremlin's new policy-would have been unthinkable .It was Mr. Titulescu who helped Soviet Russia out of this predica-

ment.From Riga I had sent to our Minister of Foreign Affairs, Dimitri

Ghyka, who at that time was attending a session of the League of Na-tions at Geneva, together with a copy of the rejected Stomoniakov letter,the endorsed proceedings of our sittings with the Russian delegate andan almost word-by-word rendering of my discussions with' him . All thosedocuments and especially Stomoniakov's letter were classified as highlyconfidential . Ghyka, too much of a gentleman to imagine even the pos-sibility of one of his subordinates feloniously using those official, confi-dential files, put them into Titulescu's hands . Titulescu had as one ofhis numerous residences two suites at the Hotel des Bergues in Geneva .One suite he lived in, and the one above he always kept empty to avoidnoises that could have interfered with his sleep or his cogitations .

Titulescu surreptitiously copied those parts of the confidential litera-ture that could serve his purpose, and sent them to his friend AndreGeraud, alias Pertinax, the foreign policy commentator of the Echo de

52

Titulescu to the Rescue / 53Paris . Geraud immediately reproduced from the Stomoniakov letter-aletter which, remember, did not exist for us because we had rejected it-and from my discussions with the Soviet delegate, enough to proclaimto the world at large that there was a Bessarabian question and thatSoviet Russia did not recognize our eastern frontier-the very thingsthat the Kremlin would have liked to have publicized, but could not,through the Riga negotiations . Pertinax rounded off his last article withcriticism about the "young, light-headed Rumanian negotiator ."

I quickly went to Paris and obtained from Mr. Geraud the followingdeclaration : 1. It was Titulescu who had sent him the confidential lit-erature; 2. Both articles had received the approbation of Mr . Titulescubefore being printed . From Paris I rushed to Bucharest and had a veryserious talk with Mr. Titulescu, who meanwhile, thanks to his intrigues,had taken the place of Ghyka as Minister of Foreign Affairs . I demandedfull personal satisfaction. It was given to me before the Rumanian Par-liament where Mr. Titulescu completed his criticism of his predecessor'sactivity by declaring, "Our Minister in Riga saved all that could havebeen saved ." A very unjustified censure of Ghyka, whose behavior, inthe difficult position in which Rumania had been placed by France'sexigencies, followed the most proper and patriotic course, his only faulthaving been his failure to bring Titulescu before the courts for an in-fraction that in Rumanian penal law was punishable by up to five years'imprisonment .

The second step in Titulescu's program was to regain the favor ofKing Carol-favor he had lost because of certain declarations of a trans-parent anti-monarchist character. Titulescu realized immediately theadvantages to be had from the existing crisis in the royal family . KingCarol had tried through every possible means of persuasion to inducePrincess Helene-the wife he had abandoned when he ran off withMadame Lupescu, and the mother of his son Crown Prince Michael-to leave Rumania, where her presence was a permanent reminder of histurpitude and cynicism, and greatly embarrassing for his pseudo-matrimonial frolics . Carol's efforts had been backed without visible re-sult by those politicians who wanted to please him .

Titulescu offered King Carol a very interesting barter : If he (Titu-lescu) were given the Foreign Affairs portfolio, he would pledge himselfto prevail upon Princess Helcne's resistance . And, using his well-knownand insinuating eloquence by appealing to Princess Helene's patriotismand arguing for the necessity of calming the agitation in our publicopinion, he succeeded in convincing her to leave for Italy, despite myrespectful insistences and those of others who understood what thePrincess's departure meant for our country.

54 / The Suicide of Europe

Hardly established at the Palais Sturdza (the Rumanian Foreign Of-fice)' Titulescu, with the obvious approval of King Carol, took a decisivestep concerning our policy toward Soviet Russia that changed its coursecompletely. He convoked, without delay, the French and Polish Envoysin Bucharest, thanked them warmly for the loyalty with which theirGovernments had backed our position during the Riga negotiations,but let them know that from then on Rumania intended to carry onalone any discussions with her eastern neighbor. Far from having anyobjection to France's and Poland's concluding pacts of nonaggressionor of friendship with the Soviet Union, he said that such diplomaticinstruments could only reinforce Rumania's position .

As a direct consequence of Mr. Titulescu's declarations, pacts ofnonaggression were immediately concluded between Soviet Russia andall her neighbors except Rumania . Thanks to Mr. Titulescu, the TrojanHorse had successfully jumped the first hurdle, and was comfortablytrotting toward its next goal : the Franco-Soviet and Czecho-Sovietmilitary arrangements . This was the policy announced by Lenin whenhe recommended a fake alliance with some bourgeois countries-a policythat in the long run destroyed every possibility of a standing reconcilia-tion between the adversaries of World War I. Concerning Rumania'sdomestic affairs, it was this policy also that provoked the greatest tragedyof her history.

The cruel persecutions of the Legionary Movement by almost all thegovernments that ruled in Rumania between the two World Wars hasbeen wrongly attributed to what has been called the Legion's anti-Semitism . There were, however, in Rumania political parties and or-ganizations that were flagrantly anti-Semitic ; but at no moment werethey ever treated with the brutality and the sadism that were used againstCorneliu Codreanu, the young leader of the Legionary Movement, andhis companions, of whom about six hundred, including Codreanu him-self, were to be assassinated by Carol and his stooges . 2Codreanu never tolerated the slightest physical violence against Jews

or Jewish properties. Any act of indiscipline in that direction wouldhave been punished immediately by the expulsion of the culprits from'The Palais Sturdza was an old Sturdza possession which was bought by the Ru-

manian Government and was used for more than half a century as the RumanianForeign Office .

2 Codreanu's first organization of young people took place in 1918 and was directedagainst Russian Bolshevik troops then stationed in Rumania . Codreanu's politicalformations were known successively by the names of the League of Christian Defense,the Legion of the Archangel Michael, the Iron Guard, the All for the Country Party,and the Legionary Movement . The Iron Guard and the Legionary Movement wereorganized in small units of a maximum of thirteen Legionaries called cuibi ("nests") .Corneliu Codreanu was for his partisans "the Captain" (Capitanul) .

Titulescu to the Rescue / 55

the organization. It was a former Jew, Father Botez, who officiated atCodreanu's wedding. There were always one or two Jews in the Move-ment, and the only trouble they gave was due to their sometimes tooextreme devotion to the Legionary cause . One of Codreanu's most be-loved lieutenants, Vasile Marin, who fell in the Spanish Civil War, hadmarried, with Codreanu's approval, a Jewish girl . Mrs. Marin became aLegionary heroine when she was sentenced to death by one of GeneralAntonescu's courts for having helped two comrades avoid capture .The Legionary Movement represented the most powerful, the most

irreducible opposition in Rumania to the Anonymous Powers thatwanted to introduce the Kremlin gang as comrades-in-arms in the dramaof European rivalries . The greater and more intimate grew the collusionbetween the Soviets and those powers-of which Titulescu was the pro-consul in Rumania-the greater grew also the campaign of slander andthe persecutions against the Movement and its chief, Codreanu .This fact was verified again with Titulescu's seizure of the Foreign

Affairs portfolio . This event coincided with the beginning of the febrileactivity of Mr. Jean Barthou, the French Minister of Foreign Affairs,which aimed at nothing less than an encirclement of Germany, andcoincided also with President Franklin D . Roosevelt's letter of October10, 1933, to Russia's President Mikhail Kalinin, offering to resume dip-lomatic relations between their two countries . None of the periods ofviolence and persecutions of which the Legionary Movement had beenthe victim until then could be compared with the brutality and theferocity of the onslaught that broke out in the fall of 1933 under theLiberal Government of Ion Duca, whose Foreign Minister was Titulescu .

We do not intend to describe in detail the series of murders, tortures,beatings, imprisonments, and assorted atrocities perpetuated by Duca'spolice, gendarmerie, and rowdies; but we will quote a passage from Mr.Henri Prost's book Destin de la Roumanie . Mr. Prost is a grim enemyof the Legionary Movement and is one of its most vociferous critics 3

Codreanu could not participate in the electoral campaign. A decree ofDecember 11 once again-it was for the third time-dissolved the IronGuard. But the Government did not stop there . It made wholesale arrestsof Guardists, closed their meeting places, and confiscated their archives .Some Guardists were killed . According to certain information there wereten victims; according to other information, thirty . The Iron Guard an-swered without delay. On the evening of December 29, on the platform ofthe Sinaia railway station, Duca, fresh from an audience with the king,s We will refer often to Mr . Henri Prost's Destin de la Roumanie and to Mme .

Denise Basdevant's Terres Roumaines contre vents et Marees, both hostile to theLegionary Movement .

56 / The Suicide of Europe

was shot and killed by three Guardists as he prepared to board the trainfor Bucharest .The circumstances of this assassination have been the subject of animated

controversy . There is no doubt that Duca had acted brutally or that hispolice went further than his instructions. But who had taken the initiativein the dissolution of the Iron Guard? We know that Duca had thoughtabout it before forming his Government . Titulescu had made this dissolu-tion a condition sine qua non to his collaboration with the Liberal cabinet,asserting that the nationalist agitations gravely endangered his policy 4

The answer to Mr. Prost's question is very simple : The initiative inthis earlier attempt to destroy the Legionary Movement had been takenby Leon Blum, the chief of the French Socialist party .

When visiting Paris before his appointment as Prime Minister, inorder to secure the investiture from those Anonymous Forces that underKing Carol had supreme control of Rumanian affairs, Duca had boundhimself to outlaw the Legionary Movement if given the Presidency ofthe Rumanian Government. He was tarrying with the fulfillment of hispromise. His hesitations and his misgivings were told to me by BaronGuillaume, the Belgian Minister in Bucharest, and by Miroslav Arci-czewski, the Polish Minister . To both gentlemen Duca confided that hedid not like at all what he was doing but that he could not do otherwise .Asked for some explanation by both diplomats, Duca answered withmanifest irritation, "It is Titulescul He threatens me with his resigna-tion and with the collapse of all our systems of alliances if the LegionaryMovement is not liquidated . I could not leave my country withoutallies." The final impetus to the fulfillment of the promise which Ducahad made to outlaw the Legionary Movement was given by one ofTitulescu's bosom friends . Leon Blum, through his scandalous irruptionin a French Government Council-to which he did not belong-de-manding vociferously that the greatest pressure be applied to Duca, theRumanian Prime Minister, to force him to abide by his promise .

It was this irruption and this pressure that helped Titulescu in forc-ing Duca to keep his tragic promise to outlaw the Legionary Movement .The cooperation between Titulescu and the French leftist circles fromSocialists to Communists, his cooperation with all those who yearnedfor a Franco-Soviet alliance, has been a permanent feature of Europeanpolicy. I think that Duca's murder, on December 29, 1933, served theinterest of those circles in two ways : 1 . Despite the military court'sacquittal of Codreanu and all the Legionary chiefs of any complicity orresponsibility in Duca's murder, this tragedy forced the Legionary Move-ment into a long period of inactivity ; 2. Duca, too weak to resist out-

' Henri Prost, Destin de la Roumanie (1918-1954) (Paris, Editions Berger-Levrault,1954), pp . 66-67 .

Titulescu to the Rescue / 57

right the pressure of the Anonymous Powers, would not have submittedto them on their most important demand-the free passage of Soviettroops through Rumanian territory in case of a new European war .Temporarily subordinated to those powers by political opportunism,

Duca was not, like Titulescu, their agent .

CHAPTER

VII

A Strange Railway Agreement

It would be difficult to understand Rumania's foreign policyfollowing the Riga negotiations without being acquainted with NicolaeTitulescu's personality, with the man into whose hands this policy hadbeen entrusted ; the man who, with Eduard Beneg, the Czecho-SlovakForeign Minister, was the most instrumental factor in helping Lenin'sdream of the "mad adventure" come true in Europe .Let Mr. Prost introduce him to you :

Titulescu is a very strange person . He has a Mongoloid mask, a hairlessface, a body with awkward rotundities abnormal in a man . He looks likeone of those former Bucharest cabmen who belonged to a sect that con-strained them to castration after the birth of their first child. His nervous-ness, his sensitivity, his flusters of temper, his jitters before the smallestdanger, his luxurious tastes-are all betrayed by a feminine temperament,which explains many of his attitudes .'

Titulescu was, in the history of Rumania, a tragic and fantastic ap-parition . Tragic because of the influence he had upon the destiny ofhis country, fantastic not only because of the physical aspect and thestrange traits of his personality, but also because of the mysterious originof the powers that dominated him and controlled his conduct . Rapaciousand extravagant, millions poured into his hands and out again . Cor-rupt and corruptor, a French deputy once said of him, "Titulescu : hewould pay you to buy him'" He felt at home only in Geneva, inSaint-Moritz, at the Lido, at the Cote d'Azur, and at other luxuriousresorts. He hated the soil of his country, from which he fled in hasteafter the shortest possible visits, visits motivated by his financial andpolitical interests. Born in Rumania, a Rumanian citizen, he was

3 Destin de la Roumanie, pp . 17-18.58

A Strange Railway Agreement / 59living like a high priced odalisque a life of opulence and extravagance-thanks to the money and the influence with which Rumania providedhim-but he was not a Rumanian.

Moreover, we must not forget that Titulescu's enigma was only a partof a greater mystery . How could it be explained that all the leaders ofa country, unanimously conscious of the danger represented by SovietRussia's proximity and intentions, chose to be blind to that danger anddeaf to all warnings, until the moment that Soviet troops invaded ourterritory?

My first contact with Titulescu was of an epistolary character ; I hadwritten him from Washington to suggest a practical and rapid solutionof the "optant" 2 problem, which I must admit, had no relation at allto my official activities in the United States . Without knowing it I hadblundered upon a most sensitive area in Mr. Titulescu's activity. Thisproblem was at that time for him the lifeblood of a not negligible in-come, and he had no interest in any rapid and practical solution of it .

I blundered once more, I believe, when several years later I advisedmy Government, from Helsinki (where I was serving as Rumanian En-voy), to adopt Finland's honest attitude toward the question of debts tothe United States . Titulescu, who remembered the not very flatteringreception he had received in Washington in 1926, was on the contraryentreating our Government to repudiate them . But I had not been inany direct conflict with him until the moment I realized, without anypossible doubt, that the interests that had provoked his intrusion in thenonaggression discussions were not Rumanian interests, and that thisintrusion was not motivated solely by the fact that someone other thanhe had been entrusted with an important Rumanian foreign policyaffair .A short time after Titulescu's statement to the French and Polish

Ministers, concerning his approval of new pacts of friendship betweentheir countries and the Soviet Union, I was informed of the imminentconclusion of pacts of nonaggression between Soviet Russia and all herneighbors except Rumania. I went to Bucharest to communicate toKing Carol and some responsible statesmen my worries about the newpolitical and military situation brought upon us by those fateful declara-

2 After the Kingdom of Rumania annexed Transylvania, the inhabitants of thatprovince were allowed to choose between a Hungarian and a Rumanian nationality .They were given a right of option. Those who chose a Hungarian nationality were,for the Rumanian Government, the "optants ." The question in dispute was that oftheir indemnification for the land properties they were losing through the agrarianreform.

60 / The Suicide of Europe

tions. Without yet fully realizing that this breach in the common de-fensive barrier, maintained until then by Russia's neighbors, repre-sented the designs of Mr . Titulescu, I took the liberty of also telling himof my anxieties . He answered me with a pacifying smile, "Just wait andyou will see ." I had not long to wait, and what I saw did not please meat all .

During his ministry Mr . Titulescu followed with all his cunning andall his unmatched faculty of dissimulation the same fixed idea : Thebuilding of a contractual international situation that would obligeRumania to open her frontiers to Russian troops in the event of a newEuropean war. This was an indispensable complement to the Franco-Soviet and Czecho-Soviet pacts of mutual assistance, for which, with hisfriend Benes, he relentlessly worked until their adoption in May 1935 .

Seen from the point of view of the inevitability of an armed conflictbetween Germany and France-a faulty point of view, I believed-Titulescu's activity agreed with French and Czecho-Slovak interests . In-deed, how could the Soviet armies reach the Central European battle-fields to comply with their part of the bargain except through Rumanianterritory? Especially since Poland and the Baltic States had firmly decidedto resist with all their might such an attempt .From a Rumanian point of view, however, Titulescu's maneuvers

represented nothing less than an act of treason-treason toward his owncountry, which the Soviet troops would never abandon after a victory ;treason toward our ally Poland, whose defensive system would unex-pectedly be outflanked ; and treason toward another ally, the Kingdomof Yugoslavia, which was the object of Russia's aggressive pan-Slavismand of Communist hatred.

In order to attenuate the sentiment of profound anxiety provoked bythe deterioration of our relations with Warsaw and Belgrade, Titulescuoffered Rumanian public opinion some artificial and deceptive securi-ties such as the Balkan Pact, concluded in Athens on February 9, 1934,which had no practical significance for Rumania ; and recommendedRumania's adhesion to a pact of definition of aggression-a remark-able product of the collaboration of Messrs . Titulescu and Litvinov-worded in such a way that Russia would have no legal trouble invadinga few years later the territory of all her neighbors .

But even this last fallacious security would not have been procuredfrom the Kremlin had Titulescu not given the Russians in exchange,in a dissimulated but perfectly effective way, what they could not getat the Riga negotiations : the admission by Rumania of the disputabilityof our eastern frontiers and of our rights to our eastern provinces . Thissatisfaction was given to the Soviet Government, through the unprece-

A Strange Railway Agreement / 61

dented wording of a railway agreement, immediately after the openingfor the first time, on June 9, 1934, of diplomatic relations between Bu-charest and Moscow .

Before narrating the story of this treaty and analyzing its terms andsignificance, it is interesting to relate the following incident, whichoccurred toward the middle of 1934 .

I had received from the respective services of the League of Nationsin Geneva the first volume of a diplomatic directory which was sent toevery embassy and legation. Looking under the heading "Bessarabia," Ifound that the history of that Rumanian province had been written in afraudulent way, detrimental to our interests, and favorable to Russia'sinsolent pretensions . I therefore sent the directory back with the com-ment that I saw no reason to buy and keep among my books such aninaccurate document . The editor's answer was that they were doublysurprised since the passages in question had been previously approvedby a highly placed Rumanian personality . There is no doubt in mymind that this person was Mr . Titulescu, the permanent Rumaniandelegate in Geneva .

Let us go back now to the revealing document of the agreement forthe reopening of railway and highway connections between Rumaniaand Soviet Russia . It is a curious fact that neither at the moment of theconclusion of this treaty, nor later, did any of our political personalitiestake exception to the wording of this document nor were they alarmedby its unmistakable significance .

Immediately after the conclusion of her pact of nonaggression withthe Soviets, Poland concluded a railway and highway agreement withthem. The agreement signed by Messrs. Titulescu and Litvinov fol-lowed almost verbally the Polish-Soviet text, with one remarkable dif-ference . In the Rumanian-Russian agreement the words "frontier," "cus-tom office," "custom authorities," "frontier authorities," and any otherwords or phrases that would have confirmed, or implied, the existenceof a frontier between Rumania and Soviet Russia were carefully avoidedand replaced by circumlocutions that were a credit to the inventivenessof the two negotiators.The responsible factor in Rumania should have been alarmed not

only by the fact that the Soviets had secured what had been until thendenied to them, but also by the fact of the new material situationcreated by the resumption, without any explainable motive, of passengertraffic between the two countries, which had been wisely discontinuedduring the fifteen previous years.

Henri Prost, generally obtuse to our feelings and our worries, at leastunderstood the significance of this development :

62 / The Suicide of Europe. . . Titulescu concluded with Litvinov, June 9, 1934, an agreement

concerning the resuming of diplomatic relations between Rumania andRussia. The Russians pledged themselves to return the treasures whichin 1916 had been sent to Moscow to avoid their capture by the Germans .They returned a standard meter of platinum . . . and also the bones ofthe Moldavian Prince Cantemir, buried in Russia two centuries before .They remained deaf to the other claims, especially those of the RumanianNational Bank, which has never again seen the 314 millions of leis, inbullion, which in 1916 formed its metallic covering. The railway bridgeover the Dniester, between Tighina and Tiraspol, was rebuilt. The firsttrain crossed it October 18, 1935, but scarce will be the passengers who willuse this international railway . The reunion of Bessarabia to Rumania nothaving been recognized by the Kremlin, the Rumanians ask themselveswhat this new agreement means for their country .3

Mr. Prost did not need to worry about the prospective passengers onthe newly opened railway, at least not about their "quality ." TheTighina bridge was not completely reconstructed when a lonely butimportant pilgrim was carried over to the Russian side . He was kdouardHerriot, former and future Prime Minister of France, who was on hisway to visit his friends in the Kremlin .Mr. Herriot had once refused to shake hands with General Primo de

Rivera, Spanish strong-man, under the pretext that his democratic feel-ings did not permit him such a friendly gesture toward a dictator-adictator who, by the way, during all his administration did not shed adrop of his fellow-countrymen's blood . Those same democratic feelingsdid not prevent him from greeting the most repulsive of the Com-munist tyrants, the murderers of more than twenty million Christians.I met Mr. Herriot in the autumn of 1934 at a reception in Riga nine

days after he crossed the Rumanian-Russian frontier . He was enthusi-astic about the reception he had received in Moscow . He told us withtears in his eyes-tears that might have been primed by the first-classvodka provided by our good Latvian hosts-that at a banquet offeredby the Russian Military Command, after the customary exchange ofspeeches, all the officers rose as one man and threw at him all the flowersthat adorned the table . Its m'ont couvert de fleurs! Its m'ont couvert defleurs! ("They have covered me with flowersl") the heavy-set Frenchstatesman repeated over and over .

At my elbow, the French Military Attache, Colonel A ., whispered intomy ear, "The bastardl We once tried to throw him into the Seine ."

I did not fail to report Herriot's description of his meeting withRussia's military men to Mr . Titulescu, then our Minister of ForeignAffairs, and to show him how alarming those contacts might be for usif they were, as I believed, the prelude to a Franco-Russian militaryunderstanding .

8 Prost, op. cit., pp. 91-92. Italics added.

A Strange Railway Agreement / 63Before World War I the Rumanian representatives in the various

European capitals had been recruited almost entirely from among thecareer diplomats. Men like Emil Ghyka, Grigore Ghyka, Dimitri Ghyka,Alexandru Lahovary, Ion Lahovary, Gheorghe Diamandy, Edgard Mav-rocordato, Gheorghe Cretzianu, Charles Mitilineu, Nicolae Misu, AntoineBibescu, Derussi, and Filaliti were respected and admired by all theircolleagues for their tact, their sagacity, the independence of their infor-mation, and the high level of their culture . They also enjoyed the fullconfidence of their King and their Government .

Two factors had modified, after World War I, this happy situation :The first was the big difference between the emoluments of the exteriorand interior personnel of our foreign service . This had provoked a steadypressure from the political parties for the appointment of their own mento such comfortable positions . The second was the collusion betweenthose political parties and the irresistible Mr . Titulescu, which almostalways resulted in the placing of personnel loyal to him in the key postsof our foreign service structure. An atmosphere of almost terroristicuniformity and conformity settled, therefore, over the personnel of ourlegations and embassies . That is why in this critical period of our foreignpolicy there was, besides the writer, only one of our representativesabroad who chose to recognize and to denounce the danger of Mr .Titulescu's activities to Rumania's security . He was Victor Cadere, ourMinister in Warsaw .

No sooner had Titulescu taken the Foreign Affairs portfolio in 1932than he hastened to diminish and counteract the authority of my infor-mation, replacing me in Helsinki by one of his admirers . I still hadLatvia and Estonia under my administration, but I had no doubt thatthis was a very provisional situation. It was, therefore, no surprise tome when I received word in the fall of 1935 that I was being transferredto Caracas, the capital of Venezuela .This information was followed by telegraphed details about the

travel expenses that were being put at my disposal-four thousand dol-lars, rather a big sum in those times . I have forgotten the exact amountof my emolument, but I remember that it was also in proportion toTitulescu's internationally well-known generosity .

My friend Cadere had been transferred from Warsaw to Rio de Ja-neiro in still more lavish circumstances. We both decided not to leaveEurope. This was my telegram to Mr. Titulescu :

I THANK YOUR EXCELLENCY FOR THIS NEW PROOF OF CONFIDENCE STOP OURRELATIONS WITH SOVIET RUSSIA ARE FOR US OF SPECIAL INTEREST AT THE PRES-ENT TIME STOP I PREFER THEREFORE TO PUT MY EXPERIENCE AND MY INFORMA-TION ON THE SUBJECT AT YOUR EXCELLENCY'S DISPOSAL STOP I ASK THEREFORETO BE TRANSFERRED TO BUCHAREST AT OUR CENTRAL ADMINISTRATION STOPSTURDZA

CHAPTER

VIII

The Murder in Marseilles andthe Purloined Telegram

here is no better way to know the truth about certain con-troversial points in the history of Europe between the two World Warsthan to take the opposite of Mr . Vladimir Potemkin's assertions in hisbook History of Soviet Diplomacy . And if Potemkin's assertions agreewith those of Mme . Genevieve Tabouis, 1 you may be sure that you havehit it right .King Alexander of Yugoslavia was killed on October 9, 1934, in

Marseilles, by a Croat terrorist . Mr. Jean Barthou, the French ForeignMinister, fell under the same rain of bullets . For Mr. Potemkin and forMme. Tabouis, the death of King Alexander was a simple accident; theintended victim had been Mr . Barthou, the untiring advocate of amilitary alliance between France and Soviet Russia. The crime had beentherefore a "Fascist" crime, to use Mr . Potemkin's expression .

There had been two murders in Marseilles : a murder by commission,perpetrated by the Croat terrorist; and a murder by omission, for whichthe French authorities, and especially Albert Sarraut, the French Min-ister of the Interior, were entirely responsible .

The civilian and military official circles in Marseilles had taken allthe proper measures of security for the protection of King Alexander'slife. As a matter of fact, the measures they had decided upon wereexactly those that had been taken a short time before for the receptionof the Sultan of Morocco. At the very last moment, however, Sarrautordered all these measures called off and replaced them with inadequate

1 Mme. Tabouis belonged to the leftist group of French political writers . She wasone of the League of Nations' "sirens," a great friend of Titulescu and of Litvinov .She is the author of Its Wont appelee Cassandra (New York: Editions de la MaisonFrancaise, Inc ., 1942) .

64

The Murder in Marseilles and the Purloined Telegram / 65

ones. The motive invoked publicly by the French Minister was hisdesire not to impress unfavorably the Marseilles voters by too great amilitary display on the eve of a municipal election . In fact, the King'scar was accompanied only by one officer on horseback ; a few lonelypolice officers were posted at crossroads .Mr. Sarraut publicly recognized his mistake and resigned immediately

after the tragedy, stating, "A chief is always responsible ."We do not believe that this explanation is good enough, and we agree

with the sentiment expressed in Paris by Queen Marie of Rumania, themother-in-law of the murdered King, to an important French person-ality: "I am ashamed for Francel"

Everybody knew, and Sarraut had to know better than anybody else,that King Alexander was the target for four terroristic organizations :the Croats, the Macedonians, the Hungarians, and the Communist ter-rorists in general. The temerity and the contempt of the fear of deathof the Croat and the Macedonian conspirators were common knowl-edge. To call off in such circumstances all the security measures thathad been decided upon was simply to sentence the King of Yugoslaviato death .

The consternation, the horror, were universal ; they would have beenstill greater had it been known that the British and Rumanian Govern-ments had offered to the French police the collaborations of some oftheir own agents who could even recognize personally some of thewould-be murderers; but the French police declined their offer .

King Alexander had viewed with concern and disgust the course re-cently adopted by the foreign policy of Rumania and Czecho-Slovakia,Yugoslavia's partners in the Little Entente . The ostracism of the Sovietsfrom European political life had been for the Yugoslav King not onlya political necessity but also an inescapable moral obligation . He hadrefused to associate himself with the various steps in the process of"rapprochement" between Communist and non-Communist countries .Yugoslavia had abruptly abandoned the conference of the Little Ententein Zagreb in January 1934 when it was announced that Rumania in-tended to resume diplomatic relations with the Kremlin . The King'sdisgust rose to a rage when he realized that Titulescu and Benes wereafter not only a better political and economic understanding with theSoviet Union, but were also striving for a new military alliance betweenFrance and Russia, with Rumania and Czecho-Slovakia as associates .

The purpose of King Alexander's visit to Paris was to declare, openlyand firmly, Yugoslavia's opposition to any further steps in a politicalprocess which, in his opinion, would lead unavoidably to a new Euro-pean war. He had already let it be known that a Franco-Soviet militaryalliance would free Yugoslavia of all of her contractual obligations to-

66 / The Suicide of Europe

ward France and the Little Entente, and would force her to look forsecurity in another political system . At the moment of his assassinationKing Alexander was, therefore, the greatest obstacle to the Barthou-Titulescu-Bene"s policy, the policy of the encirclement of Germany . Thedouble murder in Marseilles was not, obviously, a "Fascist" or a "Nazi"murder, as Mr. Potemkin and Mme . Tabouis insistently suggested . KingAlexander was the intended victim of both the murder by commissionand the murder by omission .The German reaction was immediate . Yugoslavia had never altered

until then her attitude of hostile mistrust toward Soviet Russia; theconnivance between Czecho-Slovak and Soviet officials, regarding policy,was common knowledge . Germany had to know, first, if King Alexan-der's murder was likely to bring about any change in Yugoslav foreignpolicy; and second, in what measure, exactly, Rumania had come overto the Czecho-Slovak side in her attitude toward Soviet Russia andGermany respectively.

I happened to be in Berlin the day after General Goring's returnfrom Belgrade where he had attended King Alexander's funeral . At ourLegation, Petrescu-Comnen, our Minister in Berlin, informed me thatGoring had asked to see him the very day of Goring's return and hadentrusted him with a very important message for our Government . Pe-trescu-Comnen showed me the telegram by which he was informing ourMinistry of Foreign Affairs of the General's declarations and proposals .Germany-Goring told him-had never, like Italy, encouraged Hun-

gary's irredentism . She was not interested in Hungary, but was very muchinterested in Rumania because of the traditionally good relations thathad prevailed between both countries before the last war, because of ournatural riches and possibilities of development and because of our geo-graphic and military situation . Germany was prepared to guaranteeRumania's frontiers and integrity against any aggression . Germany didnot ask Rumania to change anything in her system of alliances . Theonly thing she asked was our pledge that, like our ally Poland, wewould never permit the Soviet armies to pass across our territory.

Germany also offered, if we so wanted, to arm the Rumanian Armyimmediately, completely, at low cost, and with her best materiel .

Petrescu-Comnen asked General Goring if similar proposals had beenmade to our two partners in the Little Entente, especially to Czecho-Slovakia. Goring answered that all of Germany's friendly approacheshad been unceremoniously spurned by Prague . With Yugoslavia a friendlyunderstanding had been reached and continued to prevail .

Both Petrescu-Comnen and I realized without difficulty the impor-tance for our country of General Goring's declarations and proposals .

The Murder in Marseilles and the Purloined Telegram / 67I also saw in them excellent ammunition for the campaign I had decidedto wage against Titulescu's pro-Soviet policy .

Back in Bucharest, after about a week, I asked my colleagues at thepolitical department of our Ministry, Misu Arion and Alexandru Cret-zianu, the head and the assistant head of the department, what theiropinion about Goring's message was . They had never heard of it, andhad never seen Petrescu-Comnen's telegram. According to a new disposi-tion, every telegram received passed directly from the cipher depart-ment to the hands of a bright young chap, Savel Radulescu, whomTitulescu had brought with him to the Palais Sturdza. It was youngRadulescu who decided which of those messages was to be communi-cated to whom.

I went back several times to the political department, where I foundmy colleagues in the same state of ignorance and perplexity. Meanwhile,I had ascertained that neither the Secretary General of our ForeignOffice, nor any member of the Government, had the slightest knowledgeabout Germany's proposals. When I realized that the unbelievable wastrue, that Titulescu intended to withhold this important piece of infor-mation until such time as he could find a way to make it useless forRumania, I decided to act .

In fact, all that Germany was asking from us in exchange for theirproposed guarantee was our promise to do that which, in any case, weshould have been anxious to do : to defend our frontiers against anyenemy. Her guarantee applied not only to our frontier with Hungarybut also to our frontier with Soviet Russia, a guarantee we had notbeen able to secure contractually, in an undebatable way, from ourallies of World War I . The only safeguard for those borders was ourmilitary and political arrangements with Poland . The German guaran-tee was, moreover, additional to all those, whatever their value, procuredby our other international understandings. So there was no imaginablereason why Goring's offer should not have received at least fair consider-ation. I knew, however, too well, Titulescu's uncanny ingenuity, and Ialso knew there were many ways for an unscrupulous negotiator tobungle willfully, without much risk to himself even the arrangementsthat were most favorable for his own country .

I appealed to Gheorghe Bratianu, the chief of the Liberal DissidentParty and a distant kinsman-a man of action, courage, and patriotism(as he proved for the last time thirty years later when he preferred todie in a Communist prison rather than execute the wishes of the RedGovernment in Bucharest) .

With an approximate reconstruction of Petrescu-Conmen's messagebefore us, we pondered the best possible procedure . Bratianu asked for

68 / The Suicide o f Europepermission to declare publicly the information conveyed . I could notgive this permission, because what was at stake had been the subject ofa ciphered message ; and besides I did not wish to betray Petrescu-Comnen's confidence . Moreover, it would have been imprudent to giveTitulescu a premature opportunity at sabotage, which could have re-sulted in the German Government's playing its Hungarian instead ofits Rumanian card .

We decided that Bratianu ought to go to Berlin, ask for an interviewwith Goring, and have Goring repeat his declarations and proposals .Bratianu did go to Berlin with one of his political friends, Ata Con-stantinescu, and was received by the General .

The reception by Goring was extremely cordial . "It is a happy coun-try where the same family can count among its members three genera-tions of statesmen," said the General, alluding to Bratianu's father andgrandfather. "This does not happen today in Germany ." Goring re-peated to Bratianu the same proposals he had made to Petrescu-Comnenon October 22, 1934, stating once again that we were not asked to breakany of our alliances and repeating Germany's offer to provide ourarmy with complete and modern armament . All that Germany wasasking from us in return was the pledge that Rumania-following herally Poland's example-would never allow Soviet troops to pass overher territory without resisting, arms in hand . . . with, indeed, thoseexcellent and abundant arms Germany was offering us .Let us pause to observe that what happened-or did not happen-

in the fall of 1934, and in the following months, between Rumania andGermany had a direct and decisive bearing on the events that led theworld to the most recent fratricidal war between countries of WesternCivilization . This World War, like the first one, was to leave only onevictor on the political and historical fields: International Communismas embodied in Soviet Russia. At that time, and even after the firsttwenty-two months of the conflict forced on him by the Western Powers,Hitler wanted no other war than that for which he had reconstructedGermany's military power : the crusade against Soviet Russia, againstthe Communist monstrosity . What he feared-and what finally hap-pened-was a new Franco-Russian alliance linking Communist Russiaand the Western Powers militarily and politically, and bringing himagainst his will into a Western war in which Germany had nothing towin and perhaps everything to lose .

The idea of a Franco-Soviet military alliance, the alliance that eventu-ally was to put the spark to the powder magazine, could not have beensold even to the leftist French legislators except for the promise of apracticable possibility of bringing Red troops into geographic contactwith Germany without these troops having to fight their way across the

The Murder in Marseilles and the Purloined Telegram / 69

territory of France's allies ; such an attempt would have immediatelybrought Poland and the Baltic States onto Germany's side in the eventof a European conflagration . Only Rumania could provide the pro-Soviet conspiracy with such a right-of-way; since this could not be donewith the consent of the Rumanian people, it had to be arrangedsecretly and by stealth.

There was, indeed, a pro-Soviet international conspiracy that ex-tended to the other side of the Atlantic . Its chief purpose at that specialpolitical moment was to divert upon the Western Powers the thunderwith which Germany intended to strike Soviet Russia, in order to spareCommunism's home base the first impact of Germany's smashing blows ;to save, in other words, International Communism . Titulescu belongedto this international conspiracy and his henchmen followed blindly,and sometimes very cleverly, his instructions . Petrescu-Comnen, ourMinister in Berlin, was one of them .Unlike Mr. Petrescu-Comnen, I was unfortunately not able to preserve

abroad even a part of my private records. I will appeal, therefore, tothe appropriate passages I have found in his books, I Responsabili andPreludi del Grande Dramma, to establish the part that secret Rumanianpolicy played in the preparation of what Winston Churchill-one ofCommunism's rescuers-called "the needless war ."

Petrescu-Comnen's records are all the more interesting because hewas one of the principal tools of the Titulescu-Bene"s strategy, a greatadmirer of King Carol, of Armand Calinescu and of Mr . Ostrowsky,the Soviet Minister in Bucharest, "who unfolded an excellent activity,helping in every way Mr . Titulescu's policy of reconciliation ." Charityasks us to allow that Petrescu-Comnen perhaps actually believed thatSoviet Russia would evacuate all of Rumania's territory and would nottry to exercise any influence upon the political regime of the countryif we permitted her troops to occupy it "momentarily," although Ithink that he was too intelligent for that. In any case, while in Londonwith King Carol in 1938, according to his own memoirs, at no momentin his conversations with Neville Chamberlain and Lord Halifax did heever mention even the existence of the specific danger to Rumania rep-resented by Soviet Russia, and at no moment did he strive to obtainGreat Britain's support for any eventuality other than that of Germanaggression . In Paris he adopted exactly the same attitude, therebypreparing the way for the sinister "guarantees" limited to our Westernfrontiers that struck the toll of Poland's and Rumania's independence.As Minister of Foreign Affairs he did everything in his power to em-barrass our ally Poland in her relations with Germany. He was a mem-ber of the Government that managed Codreanu's assassination, anduntil his death he belonged to the host of the Legion's slanderers .

70 / The Suicide of Europe

Here is the way Petrescu-Comnen reproduces in his memoirs the im-portant statements made to him by General Goring on October 22, 1934,after lunch at the Rumanian Legation :

He started telling me that Germany wanted to establish sincere andfriendly relations with Rumania and Yugoslavia and that no note of discordexisted between Germany and these two countries . He did not make anyallusion or reference to Czecho-Slovakia. To my question "What happenedto your great friendship toward Hungary?" he answered, "Hungary doesnot interest us; we won't make again the error of pulling chestnuts out ofthe fire for others. Besides the numerous economic interests that connectus to Rumania and Yugoslavia, there is also the fact that you treat theGerman minorities very well ." And in order to give more weight to hiswords, he told me that he had talked that day with the Fuhrer, whom hetold, incidentally, he was lunching with me, and that the Fuhrer author-ized him to talk as he had done .2

In this rendering of Petrescu-Comnen's report to Titulescu after theinterview with Goring, five important elements that were present inthe purloined telegram, and are still very vivid in my memory, are miss-ing: 1. Goring had declared to our Envoy that Germany was preparedto guarantee all our frontiers against any aggression ; 2. Goring hadoffered a complete and modern rearmament of our troops ; 3. Goringhad asked in exchange Rumania's pledge that she would oppose withall her forces any attempt of Soviet troops to cross her territory ; 4 .Goring had stressed the fact that we were not being asked to abandonany of our present alliances ; 5. To a question concerning Germany'srelations with Czecho-Slovakia, Goring had answered that Czecho-Slo-vakia was the first among the Little Entente countries to which Germanyhad addressed herself with friendly proposals, but that those overtureshad always been disdainfully rejected by Bene"s .

Petrescu-Comnen also had been completely acquainted with Goring'sdeclarations to Gheorghe Bratianu, which were thoughtfully transmit-ted to him in detail . Petrescu-Comnen's lapse of memory is easy toexplain. It was Titulescu's and his agents' policy to deny any importanceand any sincerity to the German proposals, and to pretend that theyrepresented only a clumsy attempt to dissociate us from Czecho-Slovakia .It was in this same way that the reiterated German proposals weretreated by King Carol and all his Governments even after Titulescu'selimination from our political life. "Goring's overtures were consid-ered with curiosity in Bucharest . . . they did not find the echo desiredby the crafty German General," comments Petrescu-Comnen .

Nobody was asking us to part with Czecho-Slovakia, but to part withBenes's and Titulescu's policy-which Germany had every reason to

2 Petrescu-Comnen, I Responsabili, p . 233.

The Murder in Marseilles and the Purloined Telegram / 71believe to be part of a policy of encirclement-and to give the properassurances that we would not participate in that encirclement by permit-ting the Russian hordes to use Rumania as a base of operation . Howjustified were Germany's apprehensions is demonstrated by Joseph Paul-Boncour, former French Foreign Minister and Prime Minister, in hismemoirs, quoted by Mr . Petrescu-Comnen in his Preludi :

In his memoirs, Paul-Boncour, who was often a witness to the Russian-Rumanian negotiations, affirms that Titulescu and Litvinov had reachedan agreement by which Rumania pledged herself to permit Russian troopsand materiel to pass through her territory in case of a German attackagainst states that were bound by treaties of mutual assistance with SovietRussia and with Rumania . Even King Carol, says the former Prime Min-ister, had been won to this idea of free passage for Soviet troops . In anaudience at the Hotel Meurice in Paris, after an examination of this im-portant question, the King told him : "I promise you, Boncour, that I willconclude that agreement [about the free passage of Russian troops] . Iunderstand very well its importance for the functioning of your allianceand therefore for us also . But give me time to accustom my people's mindto this idea, and in a certain measure my mind also ." [Italics added]

Let us anticipate and observe that the first measure taken by Carol"to accustom his people's mind" to the idea of a Soviet military occupa-tion was the assassination of Corneliu Codreanu a few days after Carol'sconversation with Paul-Boncour, and the suppression, by murder andimprisonment, of the Legionary Movement's activities .At that time-the fall of 1935-the sabotaging policy of Titulescu and

his agents was to interpret certain German newspaper articles that werecritical of Titulescu's pro-Soviet policy as insulting to Rumania and asproof of the insincerity of Hitler and Goring's friendly overtures . Thosearticles were taken as pretexts for provocative and even derisive inter-ventions at the Auswartige Amt (Foreign Ministry in Berlin) .

Titulescu then gave me [October 1935] the order to declare solemnlyat the Auswartige Amt [says Petrescu-Comnen] that this campaign [ofdenigration of his policy] was highly detrimental to Rumanian-Germanrelations . Our geographic position forced us to take into consideration theSoviet reality . If the Soviets would declare themselves prepared to guaran-tee our territorial integrity together with that of our allies, we could con-sider a pact of friendship and even of mutual assistance with them . IfGermany were prepared to guarantee not only our integrity but that ofour allies, we could conclude a similar treaty with her .3

In other words, Petrescu-Comnen had been instructed to informGermany that Rumania was prepared to sign a pact of mutual assistancewith Russia, and to suggest the possibility of a similar pact with Ger-

a Ibid., p . 236 . Italics added .

72 / The Suicide of Europe

many if Germany were prepared to guarantee Czecho-Slovakia's in-tegrity. To realize the dimension of this act of provocation and of thosethat followed, we must remember the political atmosphere of the mo-ment and the state of irritation and anxiety to which the whole ofGermany, and certainly the German Foreign Minister also, had beenbrought by the signing of the Franco-Soviet and the Czecho-Soviet Pactsof military assistance . In Berlin nobody ignored the decisive part Titu-lescu had played in the preparation and the conclusion of those twodiplomatic instruments. It is very likely that many also knew that theFranco-Soviet pact of mutual assistance had been entirely worded byTitulescu . As a riposte to this beginning of encirclement, Germany waspreparing the reoccupation of the Rhineland, with all the risks thisdaring decision implied, and was awaiting only the ratification of thepact by the French Parliament to put her tank divisions in gear. Titu-lescu, who, with the signing of the Franco-Soviet and Czecho-Soviet pactsof mutual military assistance, had reached the apex of his career, with-out even waiting for Petrescu-Comnen's report about the result of hisact of provocation, was organizing noisy press conferences at which hewas boasting, in offending terms to Germany, about this peremptoryact of sabotage with which his Envoy in Berlin had been entrusted.Germany's interest in a Rumanian pledge to resist any Soviet incur-

sion was so great that, despite all the rebukes she had already received,she renewed several times her insistences . On November 13, 1936, Pe-trescu-Comnen received a visit from Colonel Schunke, the German Mil-itary Attache in Bucharest, who repeated the German offer of friend-ship and assistance and insisted again upon the fact that "Germany asksfrom Rumania one thing only : not to play the game of the Soviets, herintractable enemy. Germany does not ask Rumania to neglect any ofher interests or abandon any of her alliances ." At the same time anarticle in the Volkischer Beobachter, of obvious official origin and refer-ring to Hungarian revisionism, renewed the assurances we had alreadyreceived so often from Germany . "Fantastic revisionist exigencies," saidthis article, "are extremist impulses that do not, in the least, take intoaccount the realities of life ."

It was not due to Petrescu-Comnen's exertions, or to those of anybodyat the Rumanian Foreign Office, that the occasion was given to Hitlerhimself to repeat the German offer, reiterating Germany's friendlydispositions toward Rumania, and specifying the only promise asked inexchange .We had come to the conclusion with Gheorghe Bratianu that some

new step should be taken to bring to the attention of the Rumanianpublic the fact that there were other possibilities for guaranteeing theintegrity of our territory-against not only the theoretical danger of

The Murder in Marseilles and the Purloined Telegram / 73Hungarian irredentist pretensions, but against also the real and evenmortal danger of Soviet aggression-than those offered by the LittleEntente or the Balkan Alliance . Accordingly, Gheorghe Bratianu againwent to Berlin, this time to get an audience with Hitler, while I wentonce more to Paris to share my information with our friends in theFrench Parliament who were fighting against the ratification of theFranco-Soviet military alliance .

Not only, said the Fiihrer to Bratianu [as reported by Petrescu-Comnen]do we not wish Rumania's disintegration, but we believe that it is to ourown interest that Rumania become as big and as strong as possible becauseshe constitutes an important bulwark against danger from the East . In suchcircumstances, Germany will never encourage or approve Hungarian re-visionism ; I have let this be known to Admiral Horthy and to Kanya, whowere advised to take example from Germany, which in the interest of peaceand in order to preserve Europe from Bolshevism has given up manyrevendications-even that of Alsace-Lorraine 4

I think that for two reasons we are justified in asking our readersto follow further with patience the story of those repeated attempts ofthe German leaders to get Rumania's assurance that she would defendher own territory against a Soviet incursion: 1. The constant refusalof Rumania's responsible statesmen-King, Prime Minister, and ForeignMinister-to give this assurance was one of the principal factors in theshaping of the series of situations that led the world to the last conflagra-tion, and is therefore not only of Rumanian but of universal interest ;2. The activities of those statesmen, which culminated in the disap-pearance of Rumania as an independent state and a free nation, showhow easy it is for a clique of no more than a dozen persons, if they arethe wrong persons in the right places, to bring a country-and perhapsa whole civilization-to its perdition by preventing the will-to-live of themajority from having an opportunity to manifest itself before theoccurrence of the catastrophe .A similar situation and the same dangers might present themselves

today in other countries with less chance of being detected in time, themechanisms of misinformation and of no information having beenbrought, meanwhile, to quasi-perfection .

Petrescu-Comnen tells us about another German attempt in December1936 which was made under his administration of our Legation inBerlin, to convince Rumania's leadership of the necessity of defendingRumania's territory. Here is the account of his next-to-last interviewwith General Goring, as related by this representative-at-large of Ruma-nian interests . This interview, together with what preceded and what

6 Ibid ., p . 250.

74 / The Suicide o f Europe

followed it, might be taken as a model of perfidious diplomatic sabotageof an historic opportunity :

When we were left alone the General began with a resume of the con-versation the Fuhrer and he had had with Gheorghe Bratianu . The versionhe gave me was entirely in accord with what I knew . Then he added thefollowing with one comment that he was carrying out the Fiihrer's in-structions :

"We would like to have the same relations with you that we have withYugoslavia, with which we have reached 'eine ganz klare Abmachung' [avery clear understanding] . We do not ask anything else but the assurancethat you won't enter into any combination (sic) against Germany . Inexchange for such assurance we are prepared to give you a formal guaranteeof state concerning your territorial integrity. We have no alliance with theMagyars. We offer you our friendship. If you reject it, do not wonder ifwe bind ourselves rather with the Hungarians and the Bulgarians . In caseof a betterment of our relations we will offer you important economic ad-vantages and we will help you to reinforce your military power . We willgive you our best weapons, 'ganz vertraulich Waffen' [even the mostsecret] . . . ."We can only rejoice in your good relations with Poland, and I can

assure you that I have always advised my friends in Warsaw (sic) to takecare to keep and increase this friendship . . . . In what concerns the LittleEntente, we have no objection to it, provided it adheres to its initial pur-pose of keeping the Hungarians warned . . . . In what concerns France,as long as her relations with Rumania are within the limits of the Genevaagreements, in my personal opinion they do not constitute any obstructionto our future relations ." 5

Petrescu-Comnen's objection to Goring, on the grounds that "he wasastonished at the General's statements" was pure impudence, as thosestatements were the exact replica of what Goring had told the Ruma-nian Envoy a few months earlier, and were, besides, the very same thingGoring had told Gheorghe Bratianu . As for Petrescu-Comnen's declara-tions that he was "not prepared to take part in a political discussion"and that he had to "limit himself to certain precise questions of eco-nomic character," they were in such contradiction to all that is expectedfrom the accredited envoy of a foreign country-whose obligation atleast is to listen with polite attention to proposals of political characterand to examine their extent and significance with the proposing partybefore referring them to his Government-that Goring ought to haveconsidered them a coarse and premeditated rebuke .

As a conclusion [says Petrescu-Comnen] the General told me that he hadbeen ordered by the Fuhrer to state that he, the Fuhrer, was prepared toIbid., pp. 253-254 . Sic in both cases was added by Petrescu-Comnen . Sic after "my

friends in Warsaw" means that Petrescu-Comnen, knowing the sentiments entertainedat that time in Bucharest toward our ally Poland, did not want to mention, withoutan accusing sneer, any allusion to friendly relations between Berlin and Warsaw .

The Murder in Marseilles and the Purloined Telegram / 75renew personally and officially all those pledges and would be glad toreceive me at my earliest convenience to confirm them personally .°

Our Envoy in Berlin took it upon himself never to answer this specialand precise invitation from the chief of the German State-an invitationto which custom obliged him to respond, and permitted him to respondwithout further consultation with Bucharest . Instead of going to thehighly authoritative source-Hitler-to fathom the sincerity and thereach of the German proposals, Petrescu-Comnen started a new cam-paign of harassment of the German Foreign Office because of certainarticles in the German press-articles that he pretended contradictedthe friendly proposals that he had squarely refused to consider .

In the face of what he pretended were those "astonishing" insistencesof the German statesmen, Petrescu-Comnen felt obliged to go to Bucha-rest to get, personally, instructions from his superiors . He was extremelyhappy, he tells us, to receive from the King, from Prime Minister Tata-rescu and from Minister of Foreign Affairs Victor Antonescu, instruc-tions "substantially in accord with those I received from Nicolae Titu-lescu in 1935." Those instructions included, he tells us : 1. Fidelity tothe League of Nations ; 2. Fidelity to our allies ; 3. The greatest possibleimprovement of our relations with Soviet Russia; 4. Development ofour economic relations with Germany .

Regarding the second point alone, it is essential to observe that itrefers, in fact, exclusively to Czecho-Slovakia, who by her participationin the new system of encirclement of Germany had lost her status andher usefulness as a member of the Little Entente-an alliance the pur-pose of which was to counteract Hungarian irredentist pretensions . Atthat very moment Bene"s was wantonly provoking Germany and Italyby the huge armament materiel he was sending through France to Com-munist Spain, and by his telegrams of congratulations and sympathies toblood-thirsty Juan Negrin. The second point did not refer either toYugoslavia or to Poland, both of which were also our allies . Indeed, theBucharest Government, and Petrescu-Comnen himself, had openly man-ifested discontent, and even indignation, at the pact of friendship re-cently signed by Count Ciano and Mr . Stoidadinovici between Italyand Yugoslavia and Germany and Yugoslavia-two diplomatic instru-ments of obvious importance for our Balkan ally . We learn, on the otherhand, in Petrescu-Comnen's Preludi, how he opposed, as RumanianForeign Minister, every effort of Colonel Beck, the Polish Foreign Min-ister, to find a stable understanding with the enemy .

An understanding with Germany would not only have been the bestguarantee of survival history could have offered to heroically resurrected

6 Ibid

76 / The Suicide o f EuropePoland, but also the best guarantee for Rumania against the lethal dangerrepresented by Soviet Russia's territorial ambitions and messianic aspira-tions. This danger was felt, by instinct or by wisdom, by twenty millionRumanians; but the dozen people who, with King Carol, held the re-sponsibility of Rumania's foreign policy, along with two dozen servilehenchmen like Petrescu-Comnen, decided or were forced under irresist-ible pressure to ignore this danger completely .

Petrescu-Comnen returned to Berlin, dauntlessly heartened by theencouragement and the instructions he had received in Rumania . Hereis his narrative, concerning these instructions and the last interviewhe had with Goring before returning as Minister of Foreign Affairs tohis doomed country :

While I was still in Bucharest, Goring had asked several times about thedate of my return, and urged our charge d'affaires to tell me that he wantedto see me as promptly as possible . Abiding by the instructions I had re-ceived, I tried however, to delay the interview . But, pressed by the im-petuous General, who wanted to talk with me "on behalf of the Fiihrer," Iwent to his sumptuous lodging in the Leipzigerstrasse, March 20, 1937,and I faced him with such declarations that we could today call themheroical . Small Rumania surrounded by a world of enemies and of dubiousfriends had the courage to declare, without circumlocutions, that "Rumaniawanted to stipulate first of all, that she had no intention of abandoning anyof her present friendships or alliances ." I declared also, as I had done be-fore, that we did not intend to enter any arrangement that could bringus in conflict with Soviet Russia. That was the last interview I had withGoring. Later I was accused of not having had any understanding of theFiihrer's "generous" proposals.?

This heroic Parthian arrow did not terminate Petrescu-Comnen'sparticipation in the work of sabotaging the essential interests of hiscountry. The final torpedoing of any possibility of understanding be-tween Germany and a Rumania still territorially and morally unmuti-lated was still to come. It fell to the Government in which Petrescu-Com-nen was Minister of Foreign Affairs to condone both the assassinationof Codreanu and the attempt to annihilate by murder, prison and bar-barous oppression the only political formation that had foreseen theimminence, the enormity and the treachery of the events that eventuallywiped free Rumania from the map of Europe .

It was the same treasonous indifference to specific Rumanian interestsand specific Rumanian dangers, reinforced this time by the specialfinancial interests of Carol and his camarilla, that made this rulingclique ignore totally another part of the German proposal : a quick andup-to-date rearmament of our troops . As a result, the Rumanian soldier

7 Ibid ., p . 261 . Italics added .

The Murder in Marseilles and the Purloined Telegram / 77was forced to enter World War II, as he had entered World War I,with utterly incomplete and obsolete armament .

The year 1939 found our army in a state of complete unpreparedness .We had no armor, no modern anti-aircraft artillery ; our artillery, all ofit horse-driven, was composed of old Krupp guns of World War I andof guns that were captured from Bolshevik troops during the last monthsof that war. All of them were patched with a contraption that was sup-posed to bring their ballistics up to modern requirement . There wassome heavy field artillery (also horse-driven), the clumsy Skoda materiel,which we were finally forced to accept . Our Air Force was neither inquantity nor quality a complement to our gallant and brilliant youngairmen. Our infantry rifles and machine guns were of three differentbores, and in that state of decrepitude known as "wild shooting ." Mean-while, in the period between King Carol's return and 1939, twenty-eightbillion lei (about 140,000,000 dollars) had been spent from the budgetfor national defense.

Considering Rumania's political and strategic situation and the ur-gency of the menace at our eastern frontier, any wise and patriotic re-armament program should have provided for the hasty acquisition ofheavy and semi-heavy material from some reliable foreign industry, andfor the creation, in the central region of the country, of a complex of lightweapons and ammunition factories . Instead, billions were spent in aninsane attempt to create, in a fight with time, a national heavy-arma-ment industry that would be able to produce tanks and artillery of allsizes. Factories were mounted and dismounted according to the interestsof the King and his proteges . Billions were scattered and hoarded ; butnot a tank, not a heavy or light piece of artillery was produced, noteven a machine gun or a rifle . Remaining permanent masters of the bat-tlefields had thereby become an impossible task for our infantry, regard-less of the gallantry of the soldier and the efficiency of his leader .

Goring's offer to rearm us completely and fittingly was not the firstoffer we had received of this nature : A previous Japanese suggestion hadnot even been considered . The same thing happened with Goring's pro-posal. We have also seen how one of our Governments declined in amoment of crisis the generous offer of King Alexander of Yugoslavia .

The same politicians, the same military authorities or advisers whohad been accomplices, even if only by their silence, in the gigantic arma-ment swindle that was one of the characteristics of Carol's reign, werecompelled, when the hour of truth came with the Kremlin's ultimatumof June 1940, to admit along with the billionaire King that those twenty-eight billion lei had been spent in vain.

PART THREE

King Carolthe Murderer

At the prison we all entered one of the cells whereMajors Dinulescu and Macoveanu demonstrated howwe were to kill the Legionaries. Asking the chauffeurof our car to kneel, Major Dinulescu slipped frombehind a bit of rope around the chauffeur's throatand showed us how easy it was to proceed that way .

After that we went into the prison courtyard andeach of us received a Legionary in custody . I gotone taller and stronger than the others; I learnedafterwards that it was the Captain, CorneliuCodreanu.

Sergeant SARBUO f the GendarmerieFrom testimony to theInvestigation Committee ofthe Rumanian High Court

Our greatest national danger is in having de-formed our national structure by creating that moraldwarf: the politician. The man who has nothing incommon with our national pride and grandeur, theman who kills us and tries to dishonor us .

If that kind of man will go on leading our na-tion, it will succumb and Rumania will disappear .

Corneliu CODREANUPentru Legionari

It is not my life, which I have sacrificed long ago ;it is the honor and the existence of this country thatare at stake.

Corneliu CODREANUTo his judges

CHAPTER

IX

Titulescu and the Military Allianceswith Soviet Russia

Two different political concepts existed among the victorsof World War I : 1. That of a reconciliation between all the non-Com-munist countries before the greatest and most horrible menace everfaced by Europe ; 2. That which considered the hostilities of World WarI only interrupted, and asked for a political and military collaborationwith Soviet Russia against Germany in a second World War that wassupposed to be unavoidable. The ascent to power of Adolf Hitler andthe National Socialist Party in 1933 provoked an acute crisis betweenthe adherents of these two opposed ideas .

The partisans of these two concepts were grouped around two diplo-matic instruments : 1. A four-power pact between France, Germany,Great Britain and Italy, proposed by Benito Mussolini and signed, butnot ratified, by all the interested powers ; 2. A projected pact of mutualmilitary assistance between France, Czecho-Slovakia, and Soviet Russia .The four-power pact never came to life because it was not ratified by theFrench Parliament. It had been ratified, however, by the House ofCommons of Great Britain.There were indeed many independent and moderate elements in

Great Britain ready to approve every process of rapprochement betweenGermany and her former adversaries. Prime Minister Ramsay Mac-Donald, Sir Samuel Hoare, Sir John Simon, Lord Hartwood, LordLothian, and Lord Rothermere were among them; also the Prince ofWales, who had organized the contacts between the British and formerGerman combatants, and who later had to pay with the Crown for hiscandid statement to Mr. Stanley Baldwin : "As long as I am here, therewill be no war ."

Winston Churchill opposed with all his force the four-power pact .81

82 / The Suicide o f EuropeHis case deserves special mention . For years he had been the most elo-quent and persuasive champion in the struggle against Communism,against the Nameless Beast, as he called it in his thundering book TheAftermath, from which we quote :

An apparition different from everything that had been seen on earthuntil then, had taken the place of Russia . . . . We had before us a statewithout nation, an army without country, a religion without God . Thisgovernment, which was born by revolution and nourished by terror . . .had declared that between it and society no good faith could exist inpublic and private relations, no understanding had to be respected . . . .That is how there was no more Russia but only an emptiness that persistsin human affairs .

From the same work we extract the following interesting passages :

It is the duty of the civilized world to reconquer Russia . The Soviets donot represent Russia ; they represent an international concept entirelyforeign and even hostile to what we call civilization . . . . To win againRussia, militarily and morally, would be too heavy a task for the victorsalone, and as we must do it, we will do it with Germany . Germany knowsRussia better than anybody else . . . . That will be for her the great oppor-tunity . It will be this opportunity that will permit a proud and faithfulnation to avoid defeat and humiliation . . . . She will pass thereby, almostwithout transition, from a cruel fight against us to cooperation with us .Nothing is possible in Europe without Germany, everything is possible withher. [Italics added .]

In schizophrenic contradiction to all his former, so strongly expressedconvictions, Mr . Churchill, shortly after Hitler came to power, suddenlymoved from the anti-Communist camp to become the irreconcilableenemy of that same Germany he once wanted to send against the Sovietsin 1919-1922 . We will find him about twenty years later asking for-giveness of Stalin, as he narrates it himself, for his former anti-Com-munist campaigns .Anthony Eden followed with fanaticism the new policy of Mr. Church-

ill. His trip to Warsaw and Moscow in March 1935 had exactly thesame scope as those of the defunct Jean Barthou : the organizing ofGermany's encirclement . In Warsaw he had been given a rather coldreception by Marshal Pilsudski . The Marshal strongly advised him toleave Eastern Europe alone and to worry instead about the BritishEmpire in general and about Jamaica in particular. From MoscowAnthony Eden returned to his country with pleasant reports only : "Ihave seen a people at work . . . ." He had not let himself see anythingelse. He also brought with him that celebrated declaration, whichmight easily be considered one of the most incredible statements of

Titulescu and the Military Alliances with Soviet Russia / 83

the century, "It would be absurd to believe that Russia has any aggres-sive intentions toward Poland ."

In the French Parliament the partisans of a Franco-Czecho-Sovietalliance (members of the Radical Socialist, Socialist, and Communistparties) were encountering powerful and determined opposition thatcould have triumphed, perhaps, but for the big tactical error of PierreLaval, the Prime Minister-an error which was to cost him his life.After long resistance, Mr. Laval finally signed the Franco-Soviet

treaty, May 2, 1935, counting upon his resourcefulness to turn up, atthe last moment, a majority in the French Parliament that wouldrefuse to ratify it. He was mistaken . By signing the treaty he had doneall that was expected of him . He was promptly overthrown-with hisBritish colleague Sir Samuel Hoare, when they tried to find a formulaof conciliation between Italy and Ethiopia-by a joint and remarkableeffort on the part of the philosophical and Fabian circles in France andGreat Britain, roused in haste to action by Messrs . Herriot, Sarraut,and Blum in France, and by Lord Cecil and Mr . Eden in Great Britain .The motives that animated the various opponents of the four-power

pact and partisans of a Franco-Soviet alliance were of a different na-ture. There was among French people, of course, a traditional hatredof Germany. Such had been very likely the case of Jean Barthou, whohad lost a son in World War I . The ineffable Vladimir Potemkin writes,in his History of Soviet Diplomacy : "Barthou, as every good French-man, hated the Germans ." There had appeared, or reappeared, at thattime a much more important and powerful factor, if less visible, in theworldwide political game: the Anonymous Powers-the malevolentjinns who midwifed the Bolshevik Revolution, who guided and pro-tected its first steps, saved it several times from an impending death,condoned or covered all of its crimes and treachery-who had decidedthat the hammer and the sickle, and not the Cross, should be thesymbol and the law of the world to come . The interests of those powershad very little to do with those of the nations concerned. Their inten-tions and their goals originated much farther back than the situationsand events of that special epoch, and went far beyond them in theirsweeping vision and all-embracing dreams . Those forces had beenhelped by the murders of General Stef5nik, of Admiral Kolchak, ofFrench President Doumer, of King Alexander of Yugoslavia, as theywere to be helped later by the kidnapping-under the half-closed eyesof the French police-and the murder of General Kutiepov and Gen-eral Miller. They were helped more than anything else by PresidentRoosevelt's letter to Kalinin and by the second Bullitt mission .

From the other side of the Atlantic these powers were receiving theimpetus that would eventually lead them over all hurdles and defeats

84 / The Suicide of Europe

to the final triumphs of Teheran, Yalta, Potsdam, and San Francisco .They had their devoted adherents and servants in non-CommunistEurope, and the most opulently remunerated and easiest to identify bythe flagrant contradiction between his activities and the interests of thecountry he represented was Nicolae Titulescu.Again we open Vladimir Potemkin's book :

Everybody knew that the representatives of the Little Entente hadbrought a certain contribution to the conclusion of the Franco-Soviet alli-ance [N.B . the pact of mutual military assistance between France, Czecho-Slovakia and Soviet Russia] . Mr. Benel in Czecho-Slovakia and Mr . Titulescuin Rumania saw in this convention one of the most efficient guarantees ofthe security of their own countries . This was the motive for those twodiplomats' insistence on convincing the French government of the neces-sity of concluding very promptly its negotiations with the Soviet Govern-ment . [Italics added .]

Potemkin does not exaggerate the energy and importance of thepressures of Titulescu and Benes on the French Government to enterinto an alliance that imperiled all the pacifying diplomatic arrange-ments concluded at that time between the former enemies . But thosecombined pressures would not have been enough to guarantee to thegovernment a parliamentary majority for the ratification of such aninstrument without the special and indispensable assistance that onlyMr. Titulescu was able to procure.

I now ask my readers to glance at a map of Eastern Europe and toremember once more that Soviet Russia had no direct geographicalcontact with Germany. The treaty of mutual assistance would not haverepresented, therefore, any advantage for France unless some passagecould be found and guaranteed for Soviet troops hastening to the rescueof France and Czecho-Slovakia in the event of an armed conflict withGermany. Poland and the Baltic states had taken an unmistakablestand concerning such an attempt by the Soviet Army : They wouldnot permit it. They knew too well what to expect from the presenceof "friendly" Communist divisions in their territory . The only otherpossible passage was through Rumania .

Public opinion in Rumania was as wary of contact with Russian troopsas it was in Poland and in the Baltic states . But we did not even havethe dubious safeguard of a pact of nonaggression ; and besides therewas the matter of Russian pretensions over one of our provinces . No-body could believe that once Russia's job was finished in Central Eu-rope, her troops would evacuate Rumania entirely . There was no doubtthat Russia would keep Bessarabia, and the chances were that she wouldstay in Rumania as long as was necessary to make of it a sister Com-munist State .

Titulescu and the Military Alliances with Soviet Russia / 85

Nobody knew better than Titulescu the Rumanian people's universalaversion toward and fear of its Communist neighbor ; and nobody wasbetter qualified to lead for four years between Bucharest and Paris thispolicy of dissimulation, subterfuge and lies . In Paris this policy per-mitted the partisans of the Franco-Soviet military alliance to assert onthe basis of the most competent authority (the Minister of ForeignAffairs of Rumania) that Rumania would not object, should the mo-ment ever come, to the passage of Soviet troops-although at presenta certain amount of discretion had to be maintained concerning it. InBucharest, this policy permitted the masked adherents, or unconscioushelpers of the powers Titulescu was serving, to assert on the basis ofthe same competent authority that France did not need and did not askus to take the risk of this passage, and that therefore the Franco-Sovietand Czecho-Soviet treaties did not endanger our borders and the integrityof our territory.

Says Mr. Prost :

Titulescu will return to Rumania in November 1937 for a couple ofdays . . . . Berated by the Iron Guard [the Legionary Movement], he willhave the gall to declare that he had opposed in 1933 the dissolution of theIron Guard and to add that he had made every effort in order to concludewith Germany and Italy pacts that would have put Rumania in the samerelation with those two countries as with France and Great Britain . Hewill pretend also that he has never considered the passage of Soviet troopsover Rumanian territory. He was given the lie with such abundance andprecision that he hastily left Rumania .l

The stubborn refusal of Titulescu even to consider Germany's pro-posals had no other explanation than his decision not to agree with thesole condition that was attached to those proposals: the pledge to fightSoviet troops if they ever tried to cross our borders. In fact, any seriousscrutiny of Titulescu's policy in the matter of those proposals and ofthe Franco-Soviet and Czecho-Soviet agreements could not leave anydoubt about his hidden thoughts and intentions, which were so detri-mental to Rumania's interests . Not only did he exert himself to theutmost to help France come to the fatal decision of choosing the Sovietsas her principal ally, but he himself wrote every word of the diplomaticinstrument which brought this about; a generally little known fact. Ido not know if it is true-as he himself boasted several times publicly-that the French Government paid him five hundred thousand francs,as a specialist in international law and lore for this job, but I thinkthat this would not have been an exaggerated sum in payment for sucha great service rendered thereby to the pro-Soviet crowd in the Quai

1 Destin de la Roumanie, pp. 95-96 . Italics added.

86 / The Suicide of Europe

d'Orsay. Obviously Rumania would not oppose an international agree-ment that had been entirely drawn up by her Minister of ForeignAffairs.

The fight against Titulescu's machinations had to be waged on twofronts-in Bucharest and in Paris . I exerted myself assiduously in bothplaces .

Since my recall from the Baltic States a sort of friendly embargo hadbeen laid upon my person at the Palais Sturdza ; I was not given anypart in the daily activities of our Ministry. When I asked for some workto do, I was answered with a smile : "Don't they pay you your salary?Why do you complain?" Indeed they paid it to me very regularly, andin order to deserve it I had acquired the habit of remitting personallyto Mr. Titulescu's cabinet a bimonthly report recording my views, myinterpretations, my suggestions, my advice, and not infrequently mycriticisms, about the international events of the preceding fortnight andour reaction to them . Besides, I made it almost a daily duty to try tomake some of our political personalities share my misgivings and myfears .

For the Rumanian readers of this book I will mention, as only a partof the complete list, the following persons with whom I discussed (withsome of them many times) Titulescu's policy and its dangers: KingCarol, the chiefs of the political parties : Iuliu Maniu, Dinu Bratianu,General Averescu, Octavian Goga, Nicolae lorga ; the various Ministersof Foreign Affairs and other important personalities, Gheorghe Mironescu,Victor Antonescu, Constantin Argetoianu, Iunian, Ion Mitilineu, Gi-gurtu, Marshal Presnan, and General Antonescu .

I employed the following arguments during those interviews :1. The simple fact of Rumania's adhesion to the policy of Poland,

Finland, and the Baltic States not to permit Soviet Russia to enter theirterritory would diminish considerably the danger of a new Europeanwar, in which Rumania had nothing to win and very much to lose .

2. If, despite all, this war should start and should find us on thesame side as the Soviets, it would be a conflagration in which therewould be no possible victory for Rumania . A victorious Germany woulddismember us to the benefit of Hungary, Bulgaria and perhaps evenRussia; a Soviet victory would mean our total disappearance as a na-tional and political entity for an indefinite period in history .

3. In the most optimistic view, even if we could imagine that thevictorious Soviet troops would abandon the rest of the country, theywould certainly keep Bessarabia .

4. Titulescu's irruption in the Riga negotiations in order to permitthe Soviets to maintain and proclaim their pretensions about Bes-sarabia, and the tricky wording he gave to the Rumanian-Soviet railway

Titulescu and the Military Alliances with Soviet Russia / 87

agreement, were for me sufficient proof that in Mr . Titulescu's long-range policy this province (Bessarabia) had already been given up .

I found in the majority of our statesmen, and in King Carol also, astrange insensibility to what was without doubt the greatest danger toRumania and what ought to have been their greatest worry : the Rus-sian and the Communist menace . The sentimental attachments to ourformer allies and especially to France could have explained only in part,and only in certain cases, this strange aberration . There was in most ofmy interlocutors an unmistakable voluntary blindness, a stubborn sec-tarian docility to suggestions or injunctions of unknown origin thatwere stronger, it seemed, than their patriotism, which in all fairnessI could not question .

Professor lorga, upon whom I called at his country place in Valenide Munte, seemed quite convinced by my protestations, and entrustingme with two articles that were strongly to the point and in perfectaccord with my views, asked me to leave them in Bucharest at the of-fice of his newspaper Neamul Romanesc . When I went there, the chiefcolumnist told me that Professor Iorga had meanwhile telephoned thathe had changed his mind, and that the articles were not to be published .

Iuliu Maniu, the chief of the National Peasant Party, talked aboutthe Roman empire that Mussolini could have reconstructed had hefollowed Maniu's advice, but showed a complete lack of comprehension,and even an alarming indifference, concerning the safety of our easternfrontier .

Dinu Bratianu, the chief of the Liberal Party, refused even to con-sider that there was a Soviet menace, talked only about the dangersthat National Socialist Germany represented for the world, and almostshowed me the door when I insisted .General Antonescu, who later was to be the Prime Minister of the

Government in which I was Minister of Foreign Affairs, simply cut meoff with the question : "Are you also one of those persons who woulduse our weapons against those who gave them to us?" I asked him aboutwhich weapons was he talking ; surely not about the Skoda artillery)This did not embarrass the General, who ended a long tirade with thismemorable declaration : "Never against France)" I let him observe thatwe were not France's neighbor but Soviet Russia's, and that in Francethere were a lot of persons, among them two Marshals, Petain andWeygand, who had energetically opposed an alliance with Russia . TheGeneral stuck to his guns .Constantin Argetoianu felt that Titulescu's decision not to accept

Germany's guarantees and to content himself with those of France andCzecho-Slovakia had very little importance . He, Argetoianu, would getthose guarantees later, "And so we will have them both."

88 / The Suicide of Europe

Regarding King Carol, suffice it to say that after a long account ofmy worries about the change in the course of Rumanian foreign policy,an account to which he seemed to listen with interest, he briskly askedme, "Why didn't you accept the Caracas appointment?"

Nicolae Iorga was killed at the hands of a Communist agent provoc-ateur, a man named Boeru . Iuliu Maniu and Dinu Bratianu died inCommunist prisons after long years of misery. General Antonescu fellunder the bullets of a Communist firing squad. Argetoianu, the formermember of about two dozen boards of directors of financial and indus-trial companies, died as a mendicant, of hunger and misery in the streetsof Communist Bucharest. In fact, to the best of my knowledge almostall of my former interlocutors of those fateful days who were still aliveat the time of the Communist invasion, spent long years, or died, inCommunist jails or Communist concentration camps in Rumania orin Soviet Russia . Except, quite naturally, the two chief culprits, KingCarol and Mr. Titulescu, who died in their permanent opulence andin an uneventful exile.

We had made several trips to Paris with Gheorghe Bratianu in orderto help by our information the opponents to a new Franco-Soviet alli-ance. We made reiterated contacts with deputies, senators, ministers,prime ministers past and present, and with the press . Our purpose wasto convince those political personalities, and through them and throughthe press French public opinion, that Titulescu was lying and deceivingthem by assuring them that Rumania would permit without resistanceSoviet armies to march over her territory . We wanted to let them knowthat opposition to such a possibility was unanimous in Rumania amongcivilian and military people alike, who saw in it a death sentence fortheir country.

The nationalist press, L'Action Francaise, L'Ami du Peuple, Je SuisPartout, Gringoire, which we supplied with ammunition, was leadinga vigorous campaign against the pro-Soviet publicists, well-paid friendsof Mr. Titulescu. Philippe Henriot-who later was to be assassinatedby the "Resistance"-fought with eloquence and courage in the FrenchParliament on our side .When the Franco-Soviet pact was nevertheless signed in May 1935,

we applied ourselves with still greater energy in order to help ourfriends in the French Parliament prevent its ratification .

One day I gave to Philippe Henriot the verbatim text of a shortspeech by Mr. Titulescu to the Rumanian Senate, which I had heardtwo days before and which had not been reproduced in the Rumanianor foreign press. In this speech the Rumanian Foreign Minister re-assured once more the Rumanian solons about the Franco-Soviet pact,

Titulescu and the Military Alliances with Soviet Russia / 89

solemnly declaring that the presence of Soviet troops in our territoryhad never been considered .

I was in the diplomatic tribune of the French Parliament whenHenriot drew out of his briefcase the document I had given him theday before, and after a few introductory words started reading it. Ateam of Communist deputies, headed by Duclos, pounced upon him;a free-for-all fight ensued, and the President of the Chamber of Depu-ties-Herriot, if I remember correctly-solemnly put on his top hat,according to a time-honored tradition, and closed the session.After the fall of the Laval Government in 1936, it was Albert Sar-

raut-long ago pardoned for the murder of King Alexander in Mar-seilles-who obtained the ratification of a pact that represented nothingless than Europe's death sentence. The vote was 362 to 136 with 100abstentions-a hundred poor beggars who understood very well whatthis pact meant for their country and for the world, but who did notdare infringe upon the instructions received.

CHAPTER

X

Prelude to War

When the new Franco-Soviet pact was finally ratified, Mar-shal Petain declared to the press : "We won't be long in regretting it!"

The conclusion and the ratification of the Franco-Soviet military alli-ance was, indeed, an act of folly for France, whatever the advantagesit presented for Soviet Russia's involved schemes, or those expected byCzecho-Slovakia . This alliance not only definitely ruled out any possi-bility of a peace-guaranteeing four-power pact between the former ad-versaries of World War I, but deprived France of the benefits of all thesecurities her diplomacy had accumulated in the last eighteen yearsall of which were incompatible in letter, spirit and fact with the sense-less new instrument . Those securities included the Versailles Treaty,the League of Nations Covenant, the Polish Alliance, the alliance withthe countries of the Little Entente, the Franco-Britannic general staffagreement, the Kellogg-Briand Pact, the Locarno agreement and theStressa agreement .Marshal Petain's pessimistic prediction was not long in coming true .

Ten days after the ratification by the French Parliament, Baron Kon-stantin von Neurath, the German Minister of Foreign Affairs, convokedall the ambassadors of the countries that had been signatories of theLocarno Pact and informed them that Germany considered this pacthad been transgressed by the Franco-Soviet alliance, and that conse-quently Germany had decided to reestablish her full sovereignty overthe Rhineland. At the same time, Baron von Neurath declared thatGermany was prepared to sign a pact of nonaggression with France andBelgium; to sign an air force convention with the Western Powers ; toreturn to the League of Nations if it were in the first place admittedto dissociate the covenant terms and the stipulations of the VersaillesTreaty . It is worth remembering that, for reasons still unknown, those

90

Prelude to War / 91

peace-assuring propositions were never accepted or even seriously con-sidered by the opposite parties .

On March 7, 1936, German troops reentered the demilitarized zone .Given the extreme mobility of modern troops, of tanks and motorizeddivisions, and given the part played by air forces in modern warfare,those few miles retaken by Germany did not represent any special men-ace to the defense of France . Nevertheless, this first manifestation ofGermany's reconstructed military power provoked enormous emotionin France and in Europe . Albert Sarraut, the French Prime Minister,declared with resolution : "France will not negotiate with Strasbourgunder the menace of Germany's artilleryl" War seemed imminent. Thatit did not then break out was only due to Great Britain's refusal toadmit that in the new circumstances created by the Franco-Soviet ar-rangement, the reoccupation of the Rhineland was a casus foederis .t

On July 13, 1934, at the height of the Barthou-Bene"s-Titulescu anti-German activities, Sir John Simon warned Paris that Great Britainwould not participate in any attempted encirclement of Germany . OnApril 26, 1935, the same Sir John Simon wired his Ambassador in Paris :

It is necessary to explain to Mr . Laval that Great Britain is very uneasyabout France concluding an agreement with Russia that is likely to forceher [France] into a war against Germany in circumstances that are notallowed by Article Two of the Pact of Locarno.

The answer given to Ambassador Sir George R. Clerk in order toreassure him demonstrates how little the leading set at the Quai d'Orsay-Alexis Leger's set-understood the significance for the peace of Eu-rope and of the world of the introduction of Soviet Russia-Lenin andStalin's Russia-into the system of European alliances . Clerk reported :

I was not able to see Mr . Laval, but I could talk with Mr . Leger [theSecretary General of the French Foreign Office] . He told me that GreatBritain need not worry. The French Government stipulated, in signing thepact, the respect of all the dispositions of the League of Nations' covenantand of the Pact of Locarno .

Leger and Titulescu, the latter the redactor of the controversial in-strument, did not understand, or pretended not to understand, thatwhatever the terms of an alliance with the Communist empire, thisalliance represented a total upsetting of the contractual equilibrium,procured with such difficulty, between the non-Communist countries .

Stanley Baldwin and Anthony Eden explained to the British Houseof Commons, on March 8, 1936, that the reoccupation of the Rhineland

3 Casus foederis specifies the exact circumstances in which allied powers are obligedto mutual military assistance .

92 / The Suicide of Europedid not represent an act of war in terms of the existing treaties-par-ticularly since Germany had offered to conclude pacts of nonaggressionwith France and Belgium. Lord Astor, in the House of Lords, and LordLothian, in the House of Commons, took exception to the idea of apreventive war against Germany and interpreted the Franco-Soviet pactas an attempt to encircle Germany. Mr. Churchill, true to his new im-age, vituperated violently against the idea of signing pacts of nonaggres-sion or air force arrangements with Germany, and declared : "The en-circlement of a potential aggressor is no encirclement ."We appeal quite exceptionally to the prolific memory of Madame

Genevieve Tabouis in order to show the alarm which the reoccupationof the Rhineland provoked in Paris and all of France .

Paris was seized with panic . . . . Everybody wondered if war would breakout. And this question was repeated many times during the three days thatfollowed, three days which seemed years to us-days full of agony anddoubts concerning the position our government would take towardGermany.

The French Cabinet assembled twice on March 7, the second timewith the General Staff attending. Georges Mandel, Minister of Interior,asked for an immediate mobilization. But under the impression left bythe visits of the British, the Italian, and the Belgian Ambassadors,France limited herself to a solemn protest and the decision to ask foran extraordinary session of the League of Nations Council, which hadgiven its guarantee to the Locarno Pact .

The reaction of Rumania's Government to the possibility of aFranco-German war, and of Russia's troops trying to come to France'srescue in agreement with the new treaty, was of great significance forthose who cared to appraise the effect it was bound to have on thecoming events in Central and Eastern Europe .

In the middle of the night of March 8, 1936, I was awakened by myfriend Miroslav Arciczewski, my former colleague in Riga and Reval,and now Poland's Envoy in Bucharest. Arciczewski had in his hands acopy of a document, procured I suppose by his military attache, thatalarmed him extremely and that he wanted to discuss with me .

It was an order from the Minister of Public Works, Richard Frana-sovici, to the director of the Rumanian railway system ; its significancewas manifestly of military character . The railway services in Moldavia,Bessarabia, and Bucovina were urgently ordered to accumulate allrolling transport stock at the Rumanian-Russian border . The Russianrail spread is broader than the Rumanian, and all organized traffic be-tween the two countries required transshipment . This order meant sim-ply that our railway system was being put at the disposal of the Soviet

Prelude to War / 93army. It took us, however, a while to understand the enormity of thetreason and how its diabolical preparation had been hidden from Ru-manian and Polish public opinion . If war had broken out then, Ruma-nia would have been invaded, Bessarabia would have been handed overto Russia, and Poland, betrayed by her ally, would have seen her easterndefense unexpectedly outflanked by her enemy .

I spent the rest of the night considering the most efficient way tothwart this conspiracy against my country's most vital interests . For thepolemical part, I decided to appeal again to Gheorghe Bratianu, adeputy in the Rumanian Parliament. But there was another side to it :force would very likely be required. I knew only one political groupto which I could appeal in such circumstances for a decision that askedfor as much independence and intrepidity as patriotism ; this was theLegionary Movement, the young Iron Guard, led by the young CorneliuCodreanu. I had had, until then, no direct contact with it or with itsleader, but I knew very well General Gheorghe Cantacuzene, second-in-command of the Movement and a legendary hero of many battles ofWorld War I .

I went to see him early that morning before he had arisen . I showedhim the incriminating text and explained the situation . If Soviet troopswere to enter our territory with our consent, even if our cooperationlimited itself at the beginning to a passive attitude, the unavoidablesuccession of events would quickly transform us to an active Kremlinally. This would mean the end of our alliance with Poland, and woulddrag us into the hostilities against the Berlin-Rome Axis . If war, whichseemed imminent, should start under such auspices for Rumania, itwould end either with Rumania's disappearance into the capaciouscraw of her Communist neighbor (in the event of this neighbor's vic-tory), or with her dismemberment into a runt country (in the event ofan Axis victory) . The very existence of Rumania was at stakel Contraryto the wishes of the King and the intentions of his Government, thepassage of Russian troops had to be opposed with force . I knew of noorganization that could take charge of this protective and imperativeaction other than the Legionary Movement .

Two hours after my visit the General returned it accompanied byCorneliu Codreanu. It was my first meeting with the young chief . Ourrelations, from then until his assassination at the order of King Carol,never belied the first impression he made upon me in that hour of peril.I had before me a hero in the legendary and the historical meaningof the word. He was wisdom and daring, dream and reality, vigor andhandsomeness as of a demigod with evangelical simplicity and purity,and above all-from his serene forehead, from his ardent mien-a com-forting breath of Rumania's soul, Rumania's past, and Rumania's soil .

a

94 / The Suicide of Europe

Codreanu interpreted the situation as I did, as did General Canta-cuzene, and as Gheorghe Bratianu was to do that very afternoon beforethe Rumanian Parliament. Whatever the price, we decided the Sovietsmust not be permitted to enter our territory as friends. The first Soviettransport-according to Polish information a convoy of air force groundtroops and technical materiel en route to Prague-was to be attackedand annihilated. The Legionary Movement would pursue the fight,whatever the circumstances . Codreanu assured me that disposition tothat effect would be immediately taken; in fact, certain orders hadalready been given .The same day, at lunch at the Swedish Legation, I met Franasovici .

This is the short dialogue that ensued in French between us, in thepresence of several foreign chiefs of missions .FRANASOVICI : "Well, Messieurs les Diplomates, what interesting

news can you give us?"STURDZA: "You could give us the latest news, Mr. Minister. Tell

us, for instance, exactly what you meant by the orders you gave lastnight to our railway services in Bessarabia, Moldavia, and Bucovina ."FRANASOVICI: "What orders?"STURDZA: "The orders by which you put our railways at the dis-

posal of the Soviet Command ."FRANASOVICI: "How can you, an official of our Foreign Office,

spread such alarming stories? I did not give any ordersl"STURDZA (With his hand in his breast pocket) "Shall I show you

the exact text?"At this suggestion, Franasovici quickly took refuge among a group of

the fair sex.War did not break out that time because Great Britain did not want

it, because the United States was not yet present, because Poland stillfollowed Pilsudski's policy, and because the apparatus of the Anony-mous Powers was not yet in a working state . But in Rumania the repre-sentatives of those Powers had taken good notice of the fact that theLegionary Movement-with its multitude, with its spirit of sacrifice andits contempt of the fear of death-stood firmly against their projects.Those powers understood that the execution of their projects required,first Codreanu's elimination and the extermination of the Movement .

All the Legionary manifestations that followed-Codreanu's messagesto the King and to his Governments, the participation of the LegionaryMovement in the Civil War in Spain, the fervent manifestations ofadmiration and respect that accompanied the funeral of those who hadfallen there in this fight against Communism-strengthened the convic-tions and decisions of the Anonymous Powers.

King Carol II of Rumania, in 1933 .

UPI Photo

King Carol and his mistress, Magda Wolff, alias Elena Lupescu, in 1938 .

King Carol, Magda Wolff, and her family . Old Wolff is at the extreme right .

Minister of Foreign Affairs NicolaeTitulescu of Rumania ; to his right,Tewfik Rushtu Bey of Turkey .

Premier Leon Blum of France .

UPI Photo

UPI Photo

UPI Photo

President Eduard Benes of Czecho-Slovakia .

Count Pal Teleki, Prime Minister of Hungary .

UPI Photo

King Alexander of Yugoslavia .

UPI Photo

Neville Chamberlain and Adolf Hitler, in September 1938 .

UPI Photo

The principal conferees at the Munich Conference . Left to right : Neville Chamber-lain, Edouard Daladier, Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, and Count Galeazzo Ciano .

Europe on the eve of World War II .

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Sir Nevile Henderson, British Ambassador to Germany .

UPI Photo

Jozef Beck, Polish Minister of Foreign Affairs ; to his left, Jo'zef Lipski, PolishAmbassador to Germany .

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Prelude to War / 95King Carol fired Titulescu in August 1936 . This did not change the

course of Rumania's foreign policy, however. King Carol took chargeof it, and it must be recognized that he maneuvered it toward exactlythe same goal, with the same constancy, the same daring, the samedexterity, but with still more dissimulation . Titulescu had been firedbecause he had tried to meddle in some negotiations with Vickers ArmsIndustry of England-a strictly royal hunting preserve-and becausehe showed too openly his hostility against Poland, a favorite of theRumanian people . Three years of ruling had taught Carol that hecould count upon the docility of almost all Rumanian political leaders,and that he could find half a dozen Foreign Ministers as ready asTitulescu to follow the policy, dictated from abroad by the AnonymousPowers of which he was himself an agent .

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At no moment, from the conquest of the Russian empire by an inter-national gang to the beginning of World War II, did the AnonymousPowers show more clearly their irresistible influence over men and gov-ernments than in the Spanish Civil War .

In 1936 Spain was nobody's enemy . She had no quarrel with France,none with Great Britain, and certainly none with the United States orwith Czecho-Slovakia. By siding with the Communist gang (dubbed"Loyalist Forces" for the occasion), France was endangering three moreof her frontiers-the Pyrenees, the Alps, and North Africa; Great Britainwas prodding a conflict long since dormant, Gibraltar, and deeply of-fending the sentiments and interests of her oldest ally, Portugal ; andthe United States was gratuitously complicating one of the fundamentaldirectives of its foreign policy-friendship with Latin America. WhatCzecho-Slovakia was risking was her very existence.

There was no national interest, and still less any moral reason, thatcould explain the fact that in Spain those Western Powers immediatelytook the side of the Communist terrorists . Nobody could have ignoredthe two years of murder and anarchy that preceded the assassination ofCalvo Sotelo and the atrocities that followed the beginning of the CivilWar. Newspapers and magazines reported daily, complete with pictures,the horrible massacres in Madrid-women and girls raped in public inthe streets, then soaked with gasoline and cremated alive before theeyes of their manacled parents and husbands, and of reporters and dip-lomats; the nocturnal roundups; the systematic executions in such pro-portions that the tired firing squads threatened to strike if they werenot granted two days of rest a week ; the artistic treasures annihilated ;the churches and cathedrals dynamited or transformed into brothels ;

96 / The Suicide of Europe

the priests, monks and nuns shot like flies (7,937 of them at the finalcount); the satanic and necromaniac orgies ; the disinterred nuns linedalong graveyard walls with the pipes of the profaners stuck between theirteeth.

Let us remember also the financial and material subsidies sent to theCommunist terrorists, the mendacious information from British bishopsand duchesses, the formidable smile of Mrs . Eleanor Roosevelt whenthe murderers offered her a picture by Goya-cleansed, we hope, of theblood of its legitimate owners-as a token of gratitude for her moraland political support of the cause of Red Spain . Let us remember thatthe whole world represented at Geneva-the true prefiguration of theUnited Nations world-was engaged in a crusade for the executionersand against the victims, without even the excuse of a national interest .

In Paris on July 14, 1936, I had seen what a Communist triumph inSpain would mean for the world. French soldiers marched mournfullypast Leon Blum, the Prime Minister, among the clenched fists of thecrowds and the roars of "Les Soviets partoutl" as the Prime Ministerbawled to his partisans, "Today, anything is possiblel" Yes, anythingcould have happened then in that part of the continent, and only Gen-eral Franco's victory could prevent the establishment of the Franco-Spanish Communist-dominated empire predicted by Lenin . I decidedtherefore to offer my modest contribution to the efforts of the National-ist troops in Spain.

After a hasty operation in Paris for a stomach ulcer, I went to Franco'sheadquarters where, I saw General Fidel Davila, Chief of the GeneralStaff, and was granted my enlistment . At the time I was to leave for thefront, a violent relapse of my illness sent me to a military hospital, whereI spent almost two months in complete immobility and where I wasjoined by my wife.

In Paris, before leaving for Spain, I had paid a visit to a distant kins-woman of ours, Queen Nathalie of Serbia . Her mother was the daughterof John-Alexander Sturdza, Reigning Prince of Moldavia . Hundreds ofmembers of the Spanish aristocracy had already been murdered, and theQueen worried about the fate of her nieces, the sefloritas de Pedroso ySturdza. "If you meet them," she told me, "give them this little present ."It was a nice box of sweets. When I asked the porter of the first hotel Itried in Burgos if he knew the sefioritas de Pedroso, cousins of mineseveral times removed, whom I had never met before, he answered,"Here they are," and showed me two pretty young ladies, the onlyguests at that moment in the lobby of the hotel . It was a lucky break forme. Not only had I the opportunity of immediately delivering the mes-sage with which I had been entrusted, but it was thanks to Chiquita

Prelude to War / 97

and Margarita de Pedroso that I found a private room in Burgos's over-crowded military hospitals. Their daily presence, together with that ofmy wife, who came running from Bucharest, soothed considerably thebitterness of my misadventure .

A short time after I left Spain for Italy-after receiving informationfrom Rome that Count Galeazzo Ciano, Italian Minister of Foreign Af-fairs, would like to see me-General Cantacuzene and the group of Le-gionaries who fought in the Spanish Civil War reached Burgos . Thosewho had not been killed on the battlefields were all assassinated, withone exception, by King Carol after their return to Rumania .In Rome, I saw Count Ciano, who made me realize the folly of

Benes's attitude (Bene"s had jumped to the side of the Communist gangin Spain, with all of Czecho-Slovakia's industrial potential and politicalinfluence). Ciano told me, Vous vous rdveillerez un bon matin et vousapprendrez que la Tchdcoslovaquie a void en dclats ("You will wakeup one morning and find that Czecho-Slovakia has burst to pieces .")Poor Ciano! I could not have foreseen the circumstances of our nextmeeting, circumstances that-according to his posthumous memoirs-heconsidered no more pleasant than did I .

Back in Bucharest, I felt it necessary to acquaint King Carol withCiano's warning, to which the King answered, "Czecho-Slovakia doesnot stand alone." I learned afterwards that only the vigilance of LuisBeneyto Spain's Consul General in Bucharest, and the energetic inter-vention of the Marquis de Nantouillet, Franco's Minister, preventedKing Carol from sending to Red Spain, about one hundred fighter planesconstructed for Rumania in Czecho-Slovakia's factories .

It was my friend Miroslav Arciczewski who drew my attention to cer-tain passages of a book published by Jan Sheba, Czecho-Slovakia's Min-ister to Bucharest, which were insulting to Rumania and highly alarmingto Poland . This book, written in French and translated into Rumanian,had already been on the market for several months. Jan Sheba was aformer gendarme, a noncommissioned officer who had been transformedinto a diplomat by one of those "happy" social perturbations that fol-lowed each of the two World Wars .

Sheba's presence in Bucharest had already been signaled by an amaz-ing article in one of the capital's newspapers, in which, with no under-standable motive, he assailed with the rudest insults Queen Nathalie ofSerbia, who was related to many of the Rumanian aristocracy and was,besides, an internationally venerated and beloved figure who consecratedto charity the last years of her unlucky life . Questioned, Sheba excusedhimself by explaining that he had confused Queen Nathalie with QueenDraga, her daughter-in-law, whose tragic death was known to everybody

98 / The Suicide o f Europe

in Europe. This transformed his gratuitous insult of an elderly lady intothe profanation of the memory of a dead and martyred one ; but Mr.Sheba was forgiven in the name of Little Entente solidarity .2

In the incriminatory book, Sheba persisted in the same kind of offense-one of the biggest for a diplomat : that of meddling in the inner affairsof the country to which he was accredited. This time, however, he hadblundered into an affaire d'etat with a lack of diplomatic tact that noteven his long membership in the gendarmerie could have explained .

Sheba viewed the Moscow-Bucharest-Prague Axis as a settled fact . Con-sequently, he was reproaching us for not having taken all the technicalmeasures that would permit the quickest possible transport of the Soviettroops toward Czecho-Slovakia through Rumania. In comminatory termsSheba asked the Rumanian Government to double its east-west railwaysystem and to proceed with the building of highways (in the same direc-tion) "with an Italo-Abyssinian rapidity ."

Sheba's book did not provoke any reaction from our Foreign Office orfrom our Government despite the reiterated objections by the PolishEnvoy and the growing indignation of our public opinion . This was allthe more disquieting as it was insistently said that it was not Mr . Sheba,whose knowledge of French and whose literary talents were doubted bymany, who had written this book . Deciding to get to the bottom ofthe mystery, I brought out and disseminated among deputies, senators,high officials and foreign and Rumanian diplomats, five hundred copiesof a brochure I called "Czecho-Soviet Protectorate or Independent Ru-manian Kingdom?" in which I showed the impropriety of Sheba's inter-vention in Rumania's affairs . I observed that in any country, and in ourcountry at any time in the past, Sheba would have been asked to leavea long time ago; and I asked if the reason this had not happened al-ready was not to be explained by the fact that his book had previouslyreceived the approbation of some of our responsible authorities .

s Alexander Obrenovib, the last King of the Obrenovi6 dynasty and the son of KingMilan and of Queen Nathalie of Serbia, was murdered and hacked to pieces alongwith his wife, Queen Draga, by military conspirators led by the chief of the so-calledBlack Hand, Colonel Dragutin Dimitrijevic-Apis. Despite the fact that there was norelationship between the British and the Serbian dynasties, Queen Victoria of GreatBritain immediately broke off diplomatic relations with Serbia and they were notresumed until after her death . It is interesting to compare this attitude with thecordial reception granted at the Court of Saint James to the murderers of CzarNicholas, a first cousin of King George V. Let us also remember that Lloyd George,as Prime Minister, forbade the General commanding the British troops in Vladivostokto take charge of the suitcase in which the tutor of the Czarevich had gathered theearthly remnants of the members of the Romanov family from the pit where they hadbeen dumped by their Communist murderers . About Colonel Dimitrievi&-Apis, wewill add the interesting note that he was also the man behind the Serajevo assassi-nations . He ended his career in 1917 in Salonoki before a firing squad which stoppedin their tracks other fanciful projects that were brewing in his inventive mind .

Prelude to War / 99In the Parliament, Gheorghe Bratianu and Senator Orleanu also asked

for an answer to this question. The indignation in certain circles wasaroused to a vociferous pitch and Sheba was forced to leave Rumania,swearing without further explanation that he was not the real culprit .

The most important aspect of the Sheba incident was the effort madeby members of our official circles in the Government, at the PalaisSturdza, in Parliament and in the Government's newpapers, to saveSheba and keep him in Bucharest .Thanks to Sheba, more people in Rumania came to understand why

the German proposals had been spurned, and what was behind the un-precedented terms of the railway convention, conceived and signed byTitulescu and Litvinov .

CHAPTER

XI

Heroes, Scoundrels, and Fools

The return of the Legionaries who had fought in Spain, thetransport of the mortal remains of those who had fallen there, and theirfuneral in Bucharest started a commotion in Rumania's population suchas that country had perhaps never known . It was not only the peasantskneeling along the railway tracks over which passed the car bearing thecaskets of Ion Mota and Vasile Marin from the frontier to Bucharest ; itwas the whole Rumanian nation that was bowing low in deep and silentcommunion before the sacrifice of the valiants . The Rumanians wereliving one of those unique moments in the history of any country, whenthe virtues of the nation, so often obscured by ambition, passion, enmityor indifference, reappear suddenly in all their imperishable vigor .

For that day, for that moment, all Rumanian thought, anxiety andsorrow massed around the Cross and the flag, which were then threat-ened more than they had ever been by the enemy that was to overthrowthem nine years later. For that day, for that moment, the young manwho stepped, statuesque and dreamy, at the head of the Legionary bat-talions, was not only their leader but the spiritual head of the hundredsof thousands of Rumanian men and women who saluted with baredheads or with lifted arms the passing hearse of the heroes and the col-umns of their comrades .

This was well understood by those who were peeping at those passingcolumns through their half-open curtains .

The Civil War in Spain represented an apex in the fight between theAnonymous Powers, mysterious inspirers of so many statesmen and gov-ernments of the bourgeois world, and those national powers that opposedin every country Communist and pro-Communist policies, whatever thename or the form they had adopted . It was therefore natural that theparticipation of the Legionary Movement in the Spanish hostilities, and

100

Heroes, Scoundrels, and Fools / 101

the manifestations of veneration and admiration with which the Ruma-nian nation surrounded the return of the dead and living combatants,would determine the beginning of an acute crisis between the two person-alities who represented those two rival forces more than any others inRumania: Corneliu Codreanu and King Carol .I have never heard a shorter, more fitting description of Carol than

the one that was given me by his own mother, Queen Marie of Rumania .I was paying my respects to the Queen in 1928 before leaving for theUnited States, where I had been appointed Counselor to our Legation .Her Majesty, alluding to the personal relations she knew I had main-tained with her son-then an exile in France-despite the official inter-diction to members of the Rumanian diplomatic corps, conceded withindulgence that this relationship was understandable and even legiti-mate behavior: "Carol is young ; it is quite natural that youth wouldstick with him . You want Carol as King? God help you the day you havehim!"

Some of the traits of Carol's character will emerge from the facts con-tained in these pages . However, we will ask Mr . Prost, who could not beaccused of favoring the Legionary Movement, to give us some detailsconcerning the King's dominant vice, cupidity, which to my mind wasthe source of all his other wickednesses and misdemeanours .

The feeling against him [Carol] is motivated by his immorality, hisknavery, and his cupidity. His ambition is such that he would stop atnothing.

We have already mentioned his private life; he has never been forgivenhis affair with Lupescu . We have talked about his businesses ; everybody inRumania knows his methods for acquiring wealth . . . 1

The interests of the state will always be subordinated to his interests .. . . he will cautiously accumulate an immense fortune abroad for the daywhen he will again take the road to exile . . . .2 He is the biggest share-holder in Rumanian companies . Those companies have taken the habit ofoffering gratuitously great bundles of shares. . . . He is the owner of one-third of the stocks of [Malaxa Industries] . . . . From information acquiredfrom the national bank it seems that an armament order at a net cost of182 million lei was billed to the state [by the Carol-Malaxa association]1,600 millions . . . . To him alone the national bank yields its foreign stock .. . . Without paying a cent he became the owner of the greatest group ofsugar refineries. . . . He will ask and get at a nominal price various greatstate owned agricultural exploitations. . . .These are only some of Carol's "businesses ." . . . All these extortions

are possible only in a country rich enough not to be very quickly ruinedby them .3

Destin de la Rounaanie, p . 150.a Ibid ., p . 51 .3 Ibid ., pp . 99-100 .

102 / The Suicide o f Europe

Who in Rumania was fighting against this immorality and corrup-tion? Certainly none of the political parties and none of the political per-sonalities who expected to benefit from the royal goodwill by governingand by participating in the general plunder. Even Iuliu Maniu, thechief of the National Peasant Party and a man of undisputed personalhonesty, gave to his men the same high sign once given by Louis AdolpheThiers, in France, to his partisans : "Enrichissez-vousl" Which they did,or tried to do at every opportunity, including contracts with foreigngovernments or foreign firms such as armament contracts with Skoda,highway building contracts with Sweden, and loan agreements withFrance or other countries . The Legionary Movement alone, as Mr . Prostis forced to recognize, challenged continuously and clamorously the cor-ruption that under Carol had come to be a permanent form of govern-ment .

Besides those young guardsmen of more-or-less dubious origin are allthose who are following the Captain from pure idealism . There is, indeed,in the Iron Guard a revolt against political immorality . All the youngRumanians have listened to the accusations of prevarication that politicalparties are throwing at each other . They remember that many prosecutionshad been opened, that many culprits had often been found in very highpositions, and they remember also that no punishment has ever been im-posed. They know that the King and his friends are setting an example ofimmorality and dishonesty. . . . It is . . . a purification o f the politicalmorals that they beseech . . . . No government has understood that thebest way to fight the Iron Guard would be to comply honestly with itsdemands . . . . The majority of those who have governed [in Bucharest]have either tried to compromise with the Guard and use it against theirpolitical adversaries, or have tried to annihilate it with brutality ; they haveonly increased its influence and power . Goga and Cuza are only the repre-sentatives of a purely reactionary party ; they ignore more than their prede-cessors the aspirations of the youth who see in the Legionary Movementthe only political formation unsoiled by the vices of the other parties, theonly one that is animated by an ideal .4

Strange and miraculous is the power of truth, which springs out nakedeven from the mouth of a professional slanderer when he forgets for amoment the instructions he has received .

In November 1937, Carol, not being able to form with the existingParliament a Government exactly to his heart's desire, entrusted Mr .Tatarescu, an offspring of the Liberal Party, and his liege man, with theformation of a new Government and with new Parliamentary elections .The Legionary Movement, the National Peasant Party of Mr. Maniu,and the Liberal Dissident Party of Gheorghe Bratianu took part in thoseelections on different lists but were united in a pact of mutual defense

Ibid., pp . 107-109 . Italics added.

Heroes, Scoundrels, and Fools / 103against the accustomed interference and terror from the Government'sagents. The other political parties that participated in this campaignwere the Liberal Party of Tatarescu and Dinu Bratianu and the Na-tional Christian Party of Goga and Cuza .The Legionary Movement conducted its campaign according to the

principles it had adopted from the beginning of its existence . It did notpromise anything to the electoral masses except the cleaning from Ru-mania's domestic life of all the corruptions and impurities that hadaccumulated since the end of the war and the disappearance of the Con-servative Party, and that had become the law of the country after thereturn of Carol. The Legionaries, on the contrary, reminded the votersof the sacrifices their country had the right to expect from them as Chris-tians and Rumanians. They entered the villages in orderly formations,assembled before the local churches, knelt down and prayed, then roseand sang. The peasants looked with love and admiration at these youngmen who did not pester them with the bombastic speeches of the profes-sional politicians but contented themselves with fervent prayers andsongs of faith and heroism that everybody understood and approved .

Thanks to the control exercised by the three associated parties, theelections ended with a minimum of interference from the Government'sside. The results were as follows :

The Liberal Party (Tatarescu, Dinu Bratianu) 152 seatsThe National Peasant Party (Iuliu Maniu) 86 seatsThe Legionary Movement (Corneliu Codreanu) 66 seatsThe National Christian Party (Octavian Goga, Al Cuza) 39 seatsThe Liberal Dissident Party (Gheorghe Bratianu)

16 seats

These elections did not give Mr . Tatarescu the forty percent majorityof votes necessary to assure him, according to the existing electoral law,seventy percent of the seats in the Parliament, which would have per-mitted him to govern as Carol wanted him to do : without any significantopposition to the King's orders and whims . Therefore, with total con-tempt for the constitutional stipulations, Carol dissolved the Parliamenteven before its first assembly-an event unprecedented in RumanianParliamentary history or in the history of any parliamentary country .

Then, in a really clever move-a move aimed chiefly at the popularityof the Legionary Movement-Carol entrusted the formation of the newGovernment and the control of the new elections to Octavian Goga, thechief of the National Christian Party, which had gathered only 9 .15percent of the votes in the preceding elections . It was, moreover, a partyof extremist rightist views, and was a declared adversary of the Legion-ary Movement. Carol's reasoning was easy to understand: By pitting two

104 / The Suicide of Europe

nationalist groups against each other in elections that were to be con-ducted in the most brutal manner by his henchmen, he would discreditthe nationalist concept .Carol's reliance on Octavian Goga-be it said in Goga's praise-was,

however, not very great . Goga's political ambitions instilled in him somedocility toward Carol's intentions, but Goga the poet, who had sungwith such force, with such tenderness, with such melancholy, of Ruma-nia's soul and soil, was a patriot ; Carol could not exclude the possibilityof energetic opposition from Goga the moment Goga realized that thecountry's destiny itself was at stake. With this in mind, Carol surroundedGoga with four men whose hostility toward the Legionary Movementhad been sufficiently demonstrated . At the Ministry of the Interior ofthe new Government Carol placed Armand Calnescu, known for theatrocities committed by him under former Governments against theMovement. General Gavril Marinescu, the King's personal hatchet man,was made Undersecretary of State for Public Security. General IonAntonescu, who had warned Codreanu in a previous meeting that hewould not hesitate to machine-gun the Movement if the King were toorder him to do so, became Minister of Defense . At the Foreign Of-fice was Istrate Micescu, also one of the King's vassals, who had tried topersuade young Emilian, the recalcitrant chief of a small nationalistgroup, to do away with Codreanu .

From the first day of the new election campaign the wave of popularitythat had grown continuously around the Legionary Movement hadreached such proportions that it deeply alarmed the chiefs of the Move-ment themselves, who feared that this unmatched enthusiasm wouldprovoke a recurrence of the persecutions. This is exactly what happened.To protect his Legionaries, Codreanu ordered them to cease any activityother than their simple passage in orderly formation through villagesand towns, and to yield without resistance to the police and gendarmerieif the entrances to those villages and towns were obstructed by them .The wave of love and faith grew still higher around the Captain andhis men .

News of the first casualties was brought to the headquarters of theMovement on the fourth day of the second election campaign, where mywife and I went to pay our respects to the dead and to try to comfortthe grief-stricken parents . I had seen Goga the day before and he hadimpressed me as being under a great strain . From the tragic scene atheadquarters I rushed, raging with indignation, to the CantacuzenePalace, the seat of the Presidency . Jostling ushers and secretaries aside,I invaded the Cabinet chamber of the Prime Minister . I found Gogadisheveled, red in the face, and profoundly discouraged . I asked himif he knew what was going on under his name and responsibility . He

Heroes, Scoundrels, and Fools

105

almost screamed at me, "Do you really believe that this is my doing?"Calming down, he invited me to take a seat and asked me if I could

manage a meeting between him and Codreanu . "It would be tragic andcomic," he said, "if two nationalist movements could be maneuveredinto destroying each other . We must come to an understanding." Withthat message I went back to Legionary headquarters. Without a mo-ment's hesitation Codreanu agreed to the interview and put me in chargeof the details . Back again at the Cantacuzene Palace I suggested to Gogaour country seat, Tatarani, about forty miles from Bucharest, as theplace for the meeting ; I thought that it should be kept secret for a fewdays in order to arrange for the collaboration of the two movements,the Green and the Blue Shirts .I do not know what prompted Goga to insist instead on the home of

Mr. Gigurtu, his Minister of Commerce, in the center of Bucharest, asa place of rendezvous. I hope it was not any sentiment of mistrust to-ward me or toward the Movement . I knew, however-as the successionof events was to demonstrate-that the choice of such a conspicuousplace was not very fortunate .

Next day at a quarter of five I left headquarters with Codreanu . AtGigurtu's home we met Goga; he silently shook hands with Codreanuand they went into the next room . With Gigurtu I smoked cigaretteafter cigarette for more than an hour. Gigurtu seemed to share my im-patience and my hopes . When finally the door opened for Codreanu andGoga, we did not need any explanation ; their handshake was long andfriendly.

On the way back to headquarters Codreanu interrupted the silencewith the answer to the question I had not ventured to ask : "Yes, we didcome to an understanding." They had done it all the more easily asCodreanu did not want his to be the majority group in the next Parlia-ment. It was a situation he shunned for the moment ; and he was pre-pared to help Goga with his influence in as many electoral districts asnecessary .Home, I found my friend Arciczewski, who was happy to hear the

news. "Have you thought of everything?" he asked me. "Even of some-thing like the `March on Rome'?" Yes, I had, but I had not done any-thing about it.

Next day at about eleven I was at Goga's prepared to sell him the ideaof a "March on Rome." But as I greeted him with "Mr . Prime Minister,"he answered sadly, "I am no longer Prime Minister ."

He had been called to the Palace early in the morning and the fol-lowing dialogue ensued between the King and him :CAROL : "My dear Goga, your conflict with the Legionary Movement

has gone so far that, to my great regret, I must have your resignation,"

106 / The Suicide o f Europe

GOGA: "Sire, yesterday I came to a full understanding with Co-dreanu."CAROL: "You came to an understanding with him? Did you? Bad,

very bad, Goga. I really must ask you for your resignation ."Goga was furious and understood only then how he had been fooled .

I told him, "You have not resigned yet. You are still Prime Minister .Stay where you are. With the Green and the Blue Shirts united you havethe whole nation behind you ."

"That is easy to say," he answered . "You don't know, but I do, thatI am surrounded by traitors." I did not ask him the names of thosetraitors because I knew them already.5

I have often admonished myself for my lack of wakefulness and actionin those critical days; my excuse was my health. Concerned about whathad happened to me in Spain, I decided on a fourth and radical opera-tion that at that time, only Dr. Finsterer, the famous Austrian surgeon,could perform. When I took my leave from Codreanu, he, reading inmy eyes what he believed to be some anxiety for my probable durability,put his hands on my shoulders and said, "Don't worry, I knowl You willsoon be back healthy and strong. This will be your last operation." TheCaptain's prediction has been born out by fact, in any case for the lastthirty years. But the anxiety he detected in me was not for my life ; itwas for his .

I was with Goga in Vienna when German troops entered the city tothe delirious enthusiasm of ninety percent of its population . "If I hadknown that they could come so quickly," said Goga, "I would not havelet myself be dismissed so easily." If the two nationalist chiefs had come

6 In their book, The European Right, written with the obvious purpose of dis-crediting any past, present, or future associated efforts to stop the conquering Com-munist advance, Messrs . Hans Rogger and Eugen Weber, professors of history at theUniversity of California, offer their readers-among other more important distortionsof facts and pure inventions-a totally erroneous story of this last-hour understandingbetween Codreanu and Goga :

Intervention from various quarters-including the Germans, who were heavilybacking Goga, and from General Antonescu, then a minister in Goga's cabinet-led to negotiations between Codreanu and Goga, as a result of which, on February8, 1938, Codreanu announced that his party would abandon further electoral ac-tivity. It would run but, henceforth, keep out of the campaign [p . 551] .

There was absolutely no other intervention between Goga and Codreanu and no othernegotiations, than those I mentioned here, which we kept as secret as possible . In theGoga-Calinescu Cabinet, General Antonescu was on the Calinescu, not the Goga, side .Goga did not specify, but there was no doubt in my mind that he included Antonescuamong the traitors who surrounded him . It is not true that Codreanu announced theabandoning of further electoral activities "as a consequence of his understanding withGoga." On the contrary, this understanding provided for de facto collaboration be-tween Codreanu's and Goga's partisans during the rest of the electoral campaign-collaboration that Carol and Calinescu could not have tolerated, nor Antonescu de-sired.

Heroes, Scoundrels, and Fools / 107

to a full understanding sooner, I do not think we would have neededthe help of any German divisions to bring back honesty and nationalpride to our domestic and foreign policies .

I saw Goga once more before his death ; it was on his return from ashort trip to Bessarabia. He looked very ill .

"How do you feel, Mr. President?" I asked."I feel sick, very sick," he replied . "But how stupid of me to take

lodging in the same house where they said my brother was poisoned ."

CHAPTER

XII

From Palm Sunday to Crucifixion

The beginning of the year 1938 had seen in Rumania theapotheosis of the Legionary Movement . Says Mr . Prost: "In the begin-ning of 1938, Codreanu's Movement is more powerful than it has everbeen . One has the impression that not only the members of this Move-ment but all the [Rumanian] youth followed the Captain ." 1

The whole web of lies that had been spun around the Movement byenvious or corrupt politicians, and by the press and publicity media atthe beck and call of the Anonymous Forces, had totally dissolved beforethe eyes of the Rumanian people .The end of 1938 was to see Codreanu's two trials before Carol's kan-

garoo courts, his assassination, and his tortured body being buriedstealthily at night under tons of cement . It was also to see all of theLegionary chiefs in prison, where they finally became the victims of themassacre in which hundreds of Legionaries were murdered without eventhe pretense of a trial .

The reason for this new tragedy in the life of the Movement was thesame as for the preceding ones . The Captain had to be "suppressed," touse the expression preferred by Prost, and the Movement had to be ex-terminated because it fearlessly blocked the execution of the fundamen-tal design of the powers of darkness . Indeed, the moment those powershad chosen for the outbreak of the conflict in which our Christian Civi-lization was to perish was close at hand ; and the part assigned to Ru-mania required the previous smothering of any possible resistance there .

The countries of Western Civilization were not divided at that timebetween a group that wanted this fratricidal conflict and one that didnot want it. The clash between the two forces occurred within each ofthose countries . In France, in Great Britain, and in the United States

' Destin de la Roumanie, p . 107 .108

From Palm Sunday to Crucifixion / 109

there were many political personalities and groups which consideredpeaceful coexistence with Germany to be a historical necessity and whichunderstood that the time had come for rectifying the nefarious errorscommitted at Versailles.

It was the so-called pacific groups which fiercely opposed any conces-sion whatever to Germany, although they knew too well that the bisec-tion of this great nation by the Danzig Corridor, and the presence ofthree and a half million Germans under an oppressive foreign rule atthe very frontier of Germany, were situations that needed reexamination .The position of those anti-German groups, rightly dubbed the "pyro-

maniac firemen," had been seriously weakened by the energetic initiativetaken by the Central European powers and by Italy's adhesion to theanti-Comintern pact. The Japanese armies were advancing victoriouslyin Manchuria and had begun the occupation of western China. Thetruly loyalist forces in Spain-we mean of course General Franco'stroops-were slowly but irresistibly beating back the revolutionarytroops and the international brigades. Mussolini's Italy had occupiedEthiopia almost without resistance. Germany, after the reoccupation ofthe Rhineland, had finally realized the Anschluss without losing Italy'sfriendship. Her relations with Poland were friendlier than they had everbeen.

On the other hand, the anti-German and pro-Soviet forces were or-ganizing themselves in every country and organizing their cooperationbetween countries and between continents . Those forces received impor-tant assistance-assistance that would finally be decisive in the fight be-tween the powers of chaos and the advocates of a dynamic understandingbetween non-Communist powers-by the active cooperation of Roosevelt'sUnited States with Stalin's Russia, inaugurated by Mr . Bullitt and de-veloped into a real and fertile friendship through Mr . Davies's "Missionto Moscow ."Any careful observer of Rumania's foreign policy would have realized

that the covert activity of the various Governments that rose and fell inBucharest according to the caprices of the King tended to place us inthe same camp as Soviet Russia in the event of a European conflict .These Governments sentenced us, in other words, to certain nationaldeath, regardless of the fortune of our arms: victory or defeat .

On November 30, 1937, Codreanu made the following public declara-tion : "I am against the policy of the great Western democracies . I amagainst the Little Entente and the Balkan Alliance . I have not the slight-est confidence in the League of Nations . I am with the countries of theNational Revolution. Forty-eight hours after the victory of the LegionaryMovement, Rumania will be allied to Rome and Berlin, thus enteringthe line of its historical world-mission-the defense of the Cross, of

110 / The Suicide of Europe

Christian Culture and Civilization ." Several times during the beginningof 1938 he confronted the King and his Ministers, through his declara-tions to the press, with the insistent question : "Did they or did they notintend to allow Russian troops to pass over our territory in case of anew European war?"

Codreanu's only answer from King Carol and from the powers thatcontrolled Carol was PRISON and DEATH . But eight years later, in1946, in an address to the Peace Conference in Paris, the representativesof those who had finally provided for the establishment of Communistrule in Rumania, Grigore Gafencu, Constantin Visoianu and Niculescu-Buzesti, revealed what would have been the correct answer to Codreanu'squestion : "At that time (1938-1939) Rumania was on the way to joininga regional organization in connection with a system of security includingFrance and Soviet Russia ." Not one word about our ally Poland, whosebetrayal had already started .

The parallelism between international events and the unfolding ofthe persecutions against the Legionary Movement became more obviousin 1938 .

On February 20, Hitler, in a speech that was understood by every-body, openly announced his intentions concerning Austria and expressedhis position on the Sudeten problem with equal clarity. In Rumania onFebruary 21, the King had proclaimed the newly "granted" Constitution,which suppressed the irremovability of the magistracy, the most promi-nent feature of which was a series of dispositions unmistakably directedagainst the Legionary Movement and against its Chief. These featuresestablished the "legal" machinery for all the new iniquities Carol andhis gang had long before planned. In Great Britain the conflict betweenthe party of peace (at that time still led by Mr . Neville Chamberlainhimself) and the party of war (led in open politics by Mr. Churchill-who already had established his contacts with President Roosevelt-andbacked by Lord Cecil through his powerful sectarian agitation) had goneso far that Anthony Eden had resigned February 20, 1938, declaring thatdissension existed between him and the Prime Minister "not only con-cerning the methods but also the respective point of views ." Ten dayslater, Carol illegally dissolved the Parliament, in which the LegionaryMovement, with sixty-six seats, would have been the third most powerfulparty, and called to power Patriarch Miron Cristea, head of the Ru-manian Orthodox Church, who formed the Government to which Carolentrusted the annihilation of the Legionary Movement .

On February 24 a "referendum" took place surrounded by old andnew terrorist apparatuses put at the disposition of the Cristea Govern-ment; Carol and his Ministers wanted to give an appearance of legalityto the imposed Constitution. As in every other state administration, the

From Palm Sunday to Crucifixion / 111employees of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs were ordered to assembleand to present themselves in corpore at the polls .When the Department of Protocol delivered this order to me, I an-

swered rather rudely; so the next day, when I was summoned by Mr .Tatarescu, the new Minister of Foreign Affairs, I prepared the answerI would have given him if he had reprimanded me about my absenceduring the lamentable procession . I could have spared myself that trou-ble. Tatarescu received me almost with effusiveness. He told me that thenew regime wanted to employ young blood, and that consequently hehad thought of me for an assignment abroad . Would our Legationin Santiago de Chile appeal to me? I thanked him for the attractiveproposal, but told him frankly that a post in Europe would be more tomy convenience. I suggested Copenhagen : he took good note of it andI was sent there after a few weeks by his successor Petrescu-Comnen .The only members of the Goga Government who were kept in the

Cristea Cabinet were three declared enemies of the Legionary Move-ment: Armand Calinescu, Minister of the Interior ; General Ion Anto-nescu, Minister of National Defense; and General Gavril Marinescu, themost brutal and venal of Carol's cutthroats . Both Calinescu and Anto-nescu were well-known partisans of Titulescu's foreign policy, which wasthe same as that of King Carol . Calinescu had specialized in former Gov-ernments as persecutor and torturer of Legionaries .

After the Anschluss, the process of transforming Rumania into a policestate was completed . Political parties were suppressed and royal decreeswere given the force of law. One of these decrees enumerated a wholeseries of new crimes, among which was the singing and playing of musicwhen such songs and music could be interpreted politically . This ofcourse was aimed at the Legionary songs, so popular in villages andcities all across the country. The stage was being prepared for the en-forcing of the punishment to which the Anonymous Forces had sentencedthe Rumanian youth . Having humiliated and abased all the politicalparties and all the state institutions through corruption and intrigue,Carol then chose the head of the Rumanian Orthodox Church for theenacting of the most shameful page of his shameless reign-the assassina-tion of Codreanu .

Codreanu felt that he had no right to expose his hundreds of thousandsof young partisans to this new ordeal-new prisons, new tortures, newassassinations . In a moving directive he ordered the general demobiliza-tion of the Movement and the end of any Legionary activities. Everyone,students and professionals, was implored to strive to be among the firstin his studies or trade. Fearing that even this pacific measure would notprotect his partisans against new violence, he ordered them not to resistwhatever iniquity or brutality might befall them . At the same time, he

112 / The Suicide of Europe

announced his decision to leave Rumania for a couple of years for Italy,where he would employ his time writing the second volume of the his-tory of the Movement .

One will never find any mention of these facts in the books and publi-cations of the scoundrels, Rumanian or foreign, who even today-underwhose orders?-try to justify somehow the assassination of the Captainand of the hundreds of Legionaries who followed him to martyrdom .At first, the Cristea Government granted the Captain the passport he

had solicited. On second thought-or very likely upon new orders re-ceived from those powers represented in Rumania by Carol-Codrea-nu's passport to Italy was confiscated at the last moment . Codreanu wascaught in the royal trap, the foreordained victim of the frame-up and ofthe assassination for which the new Rumanian judiciary apparatus hadalready been established .

Codreanu could still have left Rumania . At the insistence of severalof us he had finally accepted the idea of a carefully prepared flight. Aclever change of appearance and of clothes would throw anyone follow-ing him off the trail . The rendezvous was to be that night at the homeof one of my sisters . My wife was to take him from there by car to Tes-cani, the country place of my aunt, Alice Rosetti ; from there one of hertwo grandsons, experienced pilots, would have flown him to Poland andsafety. Arciczewski had assured me of the good disposition of his Gov-ernment. Everything was prepared ; men and women were at their postsof action . The Captain did not come to the appointed meeting thatnight nor on the following nights when the same arrangements werekept ready by his friends .Several explanations have been given for this sudden change in

Codreanu's plans . Knowing the Captain as I knew him, I think thatthis is the most valid one : When his passport was taken from him,Codreanu realized that, contrary to what he had hoped, the fight anddangers were still on ; in such circumstances, leaving the country andhis partisans would have seemed to him an act of desertion impossiblefor him to commit .Visiting Codreanu a few days after the night arranged for his escape,

I urged him once more to leave and mentioned that the Polish Govern-ment had promised us every assistance in case he chose to pass throughPoland or even to establish himself there . Codreanu answered me some-what abruptly : "I don't like suggestions!" I left very disappointed butnot offended. Still a little shaky from my recent operation, I wentstraight to bed . Half an hour later, Codreanu, believing perhaps that hehad been somewhat discourteous, was at my bedside . We had a lengthyand earnest talk; and I felt once again that soothing calmness that ema-nated from him .

From Palm Sunday to Crucifixion / 113The handshake at his departure was the last we ever exchanged ."The audacity of some and the cowardice of all," said Costa de Beau-

regard when trying to explain the years of terror of the French Revolu-tion. Many were those who through their cowardice contributed to thecreation of the situation that permitted the two mock trials of Codreanu,his imprisonment and his assassination . There are three persons, how-ever, who bear the responsibility for those crimes in the most direct wayand consequently for all those that stained Rumania until the end ofCarol's regime : Carol, Armand Calinescu, and Professor Nicolae Iorga .

For those who know the facts, the most repulsive of the trio was Iorga,formerly the hero of Rumanian youth and the symbol of its nationalism .I say the most repulsive because he was the last person from whom ouryoung people would have expected the cruel and dastardly blows theyreceived at his hands. Everybody had learned what could be expectedfrom the insatiably rapacious Carol and from Calinescu, and what weregenerally their incentives ; the cynical and fundamental cruelty of theircharacters and their subservience to the powers to which they owed,and from which they expected, everything . Trying to find the motivethat caused lorga to send Codreanu to his death, and to pursue Codreanueven into his tragic grave with hatred and slander, there seems to be onlyone : envy. "Who is this young man," he asked in an article in his news-paper, "who is saluted like a Roman emperor by the youth of this coun-try, who have forgotten their old teachers?"lorga, the genius, could not understand that there was room enough

for him and for Codreanu in the hearts of our young people .The international situation became more and more menacing . Hitler

had reiterated his claims and complaints concerning the three and a halfmillion Sudetens . German troops were concentrated at the Czecho-Slovakborders. War was imminent. At any moment the Rumanian nationwould be faced with the fait accompli of the presence of Soviet troopson her territory . Therefore, the Captain and the Movement had to beutterly destroyed .

It was Nicolae lorga who supplied Carol and Calinescu with the pre-text for a short but immediate imprisonment of Codreanu, pending thenecessary preparations for the monstrous framing that brought the longerincarceration-prelude to Codreanu's assassination .

A few years before, in an editorial in his newspaper, lorga had sug-gested that Codreanu wage war against the cornering of almost everymarket by the Jews, by organizing and developing his own nationaltrade. That is exactly what Codreanu did ; and in 1938 "Comertul Le-gionar" was a flourishing organization with branches in every big city .But lorga now vociferously asked through his newspaper, Neamul Ro-mdnesc, that every Legionary shop be closed by the authorities . Codreanu

114 / The Suicide of Europe

answered in a personal letter accusing Iorga of "intellectual dishonesty."A few days before, Iorga had donned the blue frock coat of the newlyappointed royal counselors . He took advantage of this circumstance toask, and get, an indictment of Codreanu for offense to a high official .The judicial system in Rumania had always been an upstanding and

independent institution. Rumanian magistrates, from the lowest to thehighest, were irremovable, sheltered from any governmental or otherpressures ; a corrupt judge or a false judgment was unthinkable. Carolhad changed all that by suppressing the irremovability of the magistracy,by appointing his own men to low and high courts, by creating a newand uniformed magistracy who were entirely submissive to his ordersand to whom were presented all cases implying opposition to or disap-proval of his regime, as well as any case relating to the Legionary Move-ment.

It was in one of those special courts that the case of Codreanu's "in-sults" to Professor lorga was heard. The Captain was hastily sentencedto six months' imprisonment . A few weeks later, another of those courtsframed the so-called Legionary conspiracy, for which Codreanu and allthe Legionary leaders were indicted-a never-to-be-forgotten exampleof a perfect judiciary crime. No witnesses for the defense were permittedto appear after the first one, who proved too embarrassing for the court .Shotguns collected from a few Legionary gamekeepers and rangers wereconsidered sufficient as exhibits . There were no known fraudulent meth-ods and devices that were not used. All that was to be expected . Therewas, however, a new and frightening aspect to Codreanu's second triallMore than one hundred motions for appeal or for annulment invokedby the Legionaries' lawyers were rejected by the highest courts, whichalso bowed before Carol's orders and special methods of subordination .Codreanu and his companions were then sentenced to long terms ofprison from which they emerged only for their assassinations-this timewithout even a pretense at justice .A stupor prevailed throughout the country ; party newspapers and

party leaders kept silence in their shame. Some manifestation of disap-proval came only from Iuliu Maniu, the leader of the National PeasantParty, who, while the trial was going on, had the courage to go to thebench of the defense and shake Codreanu's hand . Professor lorga alonepretended to believe in the righteousness of the verdict and was hysteri-cally jubilant in his newspaper .

With this conviction, the international significance of which I under-stood perfectly, I realized there was no longer any possible compatibilitybetween Rumania's interests and Carol's activities . I realized that thenational cause was defended in those critical moments by one politicalgroup only: the Legionary Movement. I decided, therefore, to consider

From Palm Sunday to Crucifixion / 115myself as liberated from any bond of loyalty toward the felonious King,whom up to the last moment I had expected to return to duty andpatriotism. But with the full approval of my wife and my son, I de-cided to keep continuous contact with the Movement, I decided to con-sult it regarding the way I could help in its efforts to survive and inits fight to save Rumania as a political and national entity . I furtherdecided to put all of my experience, my contacts, and my informationin matters of foreign policy at its disposal .

Bitter experiences had taught the Movement to organize in such away that it was never left without a leader . The command passed as in amilitary organization from the general to the last corporal, if he shouldhappen to be the last leader alive . A few days after Codreanu's secondtrial, when I was informed by Petrescu-Comnen of my appointment asRumanian Envoy to Copenhagen, I consulted with the new leaders ofthe Movement about accepting or declining this offer . They urged meto accept it because of the liberty of movement and contacts it wouldafford me .

Contrary to the time-honored ceremonial practice of the diplomaticcorps, I left Bucharest without presenting myself to the King. I stoppedin Berlin, where I wanted to get first-hand information about Germany'simmediate intentions concerning Czecho-Slovakia, and to secure, if pos-sible, an audience with Hitler without the intervention of our Legation .In the Reichskanzlei I found only Captain Weidemann, Hitler's per-sonal secretary . He offered to arrange an interview with the Fiihrer,who was then in Berchtesgaden . However, I could not accept this offeras I knew that my trip there could not have been kept secret. I had tocontent myself with Weidemann's solemn promise that he would conveyto his chief our great anxiety : Codreanu's life was in danger, and thisdanger would increase with the intensity of the international crisis .

CHAPTER

XIII

Visit to London and Codreanu's Assassination-The Two Grynszpans

Between September 12 and October 1, 1938, internationalevents were piling up with unmatched velocity. Hitler's speech at Niirn-berg was followed by Lord Londonderry and Lord Runciman's' missionto Germany and Czecho-Slovakia, by the third meeting of Chamberlainand Hitler, by the signing of the Munich Pact-the most intelligentdiplomatic instrument conceived in Europe since the defunct LocarnoPact in 1925-and by the entrance of German troops into the Sudeten-land. In Great Britain, parallel to that long series of events, a violentquarrel was raging in the Government, in Parliament, and in the pressbetween Mr. Benes's partisans and those who did not understand whyseven million Czechs should have the right to rule and even misrule overthree and a half million Germans . 2Mr. Duff Cooper, Lord of the Admiralty, had noisily resigned, follow-

' Lord Runciman was sent to Prague by Chamberlain as a special envoy to induceBenei to a yielding attitude towards Germany's demands . Runciman backed those de-mands entirely and came back with a report entirely favorable to Germany .z Georges Bonnet was French Foreign Minister at the time of the Munich confer-

ence. In his book Defense de la Paix (page 319) he answers the accusation that theMunich agreements were an unhappy compromise. We quote: "To how many newMunichs have they (the Western Powers) been forced to subscribe since 1944! Wemust make, however, this distinction : At Munich the Sudeten population by a massivevote expressed their will to be united to Germany . Today millions of families havebeen torn away from their countries . . . . They were not consulted about their fate .Various nations have disappeared ; others have kept only their names. Where is therespect of the right of self-determination? What has happened to the sonorous stipu-lations of the Atlantic Charter? After having a glimpse at the present map of Europe,who could dare criticize the Munich agreements in the name of the 'great principles,'violated a hundred times since . . . 1 We were hoping that once the war was won wecould have got rid of falsehood; but this has not happened . It is to the law of false-hood that the world has succumbed today."

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Visit to London and Codreanu's Assassination / 117

ing Mr. Eden's example. Powerful political and social groups in Europe,backed very stealthily but efficiently by President Roosevelt's attitudeand policies and by the North American press, had risen in arms anddecided to resort to any means to thwart the impulse toward peace givenat Munich to European events .

The anti-Munich activities were gravely handicapped by the fact thatthe Munich arrangement had been received with almost delirious en-thusiasm by the French and the British people . Seldom had the secretpowers of revolution and war been in a more alarming situation . Thepanic was on when it was announced that a Franco-German pact offriendship, similar to that which had been concluded between Germanyand Great Britain, was to be signed in Paris by Herr Ribbentrop him-self. This was the moment chosen by the powers of darkness for sendingHerschel Grynszpan, a Jewish refugee from Poland, to the German Em-bassy in Paris on November 7 to kill young Counselor Ernst vom Rath .Here are the comments of Anatole de Monzie, a politician of leftist

persuasion and former lawyer of the Soviet Embassy in Paris, concern-ing Rath's assassination :

November 7, 1938: a young Polish Israelite, Grynszpan, has mortallywounded the Counselor to the German Embassy . Since the Franco-GermanPact has just been signed, the coincidence of this agreement and of thiscrime prompts one to believe that there is a connection of cause and effectbetween the diplomatic action and the crime . We could perhaps eliminatethe hypothesis of a political complicity . . . . But as a result of this crime,all of that which seems to be the prelude to a Franco-German rapproche-ment is again called in question . The young Jewish murderer will be de-fended, one will fight for his defense and gather money to help this de-fense . . . . The French workers' susceptibility will increase the danger,danger for us, danger for the Jews because it associates the activities of theJewish proletariat with the bellicose activities of Jewish capitalism . [Italicsadded.]

Mr. de Monzie was right in his predictions, but it was not the Frenchbut the North American "sensitivity" that manifested itself thunder-ingly. The United States press went immediately to work extolling theaction of the "young hero." Public meetings were organized from NewYork to San Francisco in defense of Grynszpan and his crime . The NewYork Times announced triumphantly that thirty thousand dollars al-ready had been put at Grynszpan's disposition . President Roosevelt,with the uncanny precision of the pyromaniac, chose this moment forrecalling Ambassador Hugh Wilson from Berlin . The German Govern-ment in turn recalled its Ambassador to Washington, Hans Diekhoff .

The murder did not have the grave consequences expected by thosewho had planned it. The German Government hastened to demon-

118 / The Suicide of Europe

strate that it did not consider France in any way implicated. Herr Rib-bentrop, who had signed the Franco-German arrangement, generouslydistributed medals and praise to the doctors and nurses who had as-sisted Rath, and to the French veterans who had offered their blood forthe necessary transfusions .

The Anonymous Forces had, however, another "Grynszpan" in reservein Rumania .

The first visit of Carol to Great Britain had resulted in a total fiasco .As a king and as a relative, he had been automatically invited to KingGeorge's funeral on January 29, 1936 . He left Rumania accompaniedby a whole battalion of infantrymen which he wanted to parade inLondon at the obsequies . At Calais he was informed that his troop wasnot wanted and that he had to wait in France for the day that had beenassigned for his reception on British soil . In London there were otherdisagreements and humiliations . Queen Mary refused to receive him .The newspapers had a good laugh about his frustrated "invasion ofEngland" and about a strange character who paraded around in Ru-manian national garb and who seemed especially attached to Carol,following him even at the funeral rites. The press described him asCarol's "masseur ." The only bright point in all the unhappy voyage wasthe hasty collection by the Rumanian National Bank of all dollars,pounds, and Swiss francs that could be found on the Bucharest market,which were then delivered into the King's custody as traveling expensesfor his military expedition .

London's attitude toward Carol changed suddenly . Ten days afterRath's assassination, Carol, persona grata again, received a special andurgent invitation from the British Government . After a short stay inLondon and a diabolically calculated visit to Hitler, he was back inBucharest on November 28 . That same night he had a long conferencewith Armand Calinescu and General Marinescu . Within thirty-six hours,on the night of Saint Andrew-the night of the vampires, in Rumanianfolklore-Codreanu was assassinated in the woods of Tancabesti byCarol's executioners .An explosion of cheers shook the international press at the news of

the Captain's murder . The Times in London and the Times in NewYork both came out with the same comment : "Well donel" Ward Price,the well-known British publicist, visiting Carol a short time after themurder, had this to say about him : "I was impressed by the firm anddetermined attitude of a man we in Great Britain had considered not avery serious character ." The Minister of Great Britain in Prague feltcompelled to pay a special visit to our Minister, Radu Crutzescu . "Itwas a great act of courage," the British Minister told Crutzescu, refer-ring to the murder of the Captain .

Visit to London and Codreanu's Assassination / 119As Codreanu's death is always related by French, British and German

books and publications-with the complicity of some Rumanians, stillmore despicable than the foreign impostors-in a misleading way, cal-culated to attenuate Carol's infamy or even to obliterate it completely,we cannot end this chapter without telling it as it happened and as welived it .

I was home from Copenhagen on a short leave ; I had just left mywife and son downstairs listening to light music on the radio and goneto my room for some rest when my son, white-faced and scarcely able totalk between the sobs that choked him, shouted to me : "They have mur-dered the Captainl" Between a waltz and a jazz piece the radio hadannounced that Codreanu and thirteen of his companions had been shotto death in an escape attempt while being moved from one prison toanother. Immediately after this announcement the light music startedagain. Ten months later, when Calinescu, Codreanu's murderer, wasexecuted by nine Legionaries, the young men, before giving themselvesup to the police, got hold of the radio station and, interrupting thelight music for a minute, announced to the nation : "The Captain hasbeen avengedl"

Here follows the description of Codreanu's murder as given in No-vember 1940 to the investigation committee of the Rumanian HighCourt of Cassation, by one of the executioners :

We left that night [November 29 to November 30] in two police busses .The gendarmes, Majors Dinulescu and Macoveanu, were with us . In Ramnicwe alighted at the Gendarmerie barracks where Majors Dinulescu andMacoveanu made contact with Major Rosianu, commander of the localgendarmerie .

At the prison we all entered one of the cells where Majors Dinulescuand Macoveanu demonstrated how we were to kill the Legionaries.Asking the chauffeur of our car to kneel, the major slipped from behind abit of rope around the chauffeur's throat and showed us how easy it was toproceed that way.

After that we went into the prison courtyard and each of us received aLegionary in custody . I got one taller and stronger than the others; Ilearned afterwards that it was the Captain, Corneliu Codreanu .

We put them in the two police cars. There we attached their hands tothe rear bench and their feet to the lower part of the front seat in such away that they could not move one way or the other . Ten of them werebound in the first car and four of them in the second .

I was in the first bus with the ten, seated behind the Captain ; a gendarmewas seated behind each Legionary . In our hands we had the ropes. MajorDinulescu was in my car, Major Macoveanu in the other. There was com-plete silence, as neither we nor the Legionaries were allowed to talk .When we reached the Tancabesti woods, Major Dinulescu, with whom

we had agreed about a signal, turned his electric lamp on and off threetimes. It was the moment for the execution. But I don't know why none

120 / The Suicide of Europe

of us moved . Then Major Dinulescu stopped the car and went to theother car .In the other car Major Macoveanu had been obeyed, and the four

Legionaries had already been strangled .The Captain, turning slightly toward me, whispered : "Comrade, permit

me to talk to my comrades ." But in the same moment, even before he hadfinished his sentence, Major Dinulescu appeared with his revolver in hishand and growled between his teeth : "Executel"

Then the gendarmes threw their ropes . . . .We proceeded with lowered curtains to Jilava . We reached it at seven

o'clock. There we were received by Colonel Gherovici, the legal medic,Lieutenant Colonel lonescu and others . . . .The grave was already prepared . The corpses of the Legionaries were

then shot several times in the back to substantiate the story of an evasionattempt, and thrown in the prepared grave . Some weeks later the samegendarmes were called to Jilava, and after opening the grave, we threwover the corpses fifteen gallons of vitriol. We were asked to sign a declara-tion confirming the story that the Legionaries had been shot while tryingto escape. . . .Later I was summoned by Colonel Gherovici who told me : "You are

mighty strong; you could have done away with three of them ." Then hemade me sign a receipt for 20,000 leis as medical help . I told him that Iwas not ill . "Keep your mouth shut," he told me . "If you don't, I will stopit with mud ." And he showed me a Mauser pistol that was on his table.

We can easily imagine Carol and his mistress anxiously awaiting onthis Saint Andrew's night the news of the Captain's death-news thatArmand Calinescu or Gavril Marinescu no doubt took to them person-ally.

The assassination of Rath in Paris did not provoke the war as expectedby the anti-Munich conspiracy ; they had far better results with theassassination in Tancabesti . It was Codreanu's murder that promptedHitler to a radical tactical change in his foreign policy-a change loadedwith the most fateful consequences not only for Germany but for theentire world of Western Civilization .

CHAPTER

XIV

Codreanu's Suppression and Hitler's Policy

The British historian H . R. Trevor-Roper, from Oxford Uni-versity, an official investigator of the documents captured from the Na-tional Socialist Government, has commented as follows on Hitler's sud-den change of attitude in 1939 toward Soviet Russia :

It has been said that Hitler's real war was against the West ; that hedecided against Russia only in order to break the blockade imposed uponGermany by the West ; that the war against Russia was in fact an irrelevant,perhaps even an unwelcome tactical necessity in that most serious struggleagainst the West . . . .

I do not believe that Hitler's real struggle was against the West .In Mein Kampf, and again in his last book on foreign policy, which

he wrote in 1925, Hitler expressed his dream of a British alliance thatwould neutralize French opposition and make possible the German con-quest of the East . This war that broke out in 1939 was declared byBritain . Hitler would have done anything to avoid this tedious diver-sion in his rear. . . . The war in the West in 1939 was, as far as Hitlerwas concerned, an unwanted war .

How different was Hitler's attitude towards Russial There was a periodof agreement of course, 1939-1941, but it was a reluctant and treacherousagreement, and it was with a cry of relief that Hitler finally jettisonedthis irksome expedient "contrary to my whole past, my ideas and myprevious obligations." [Italics added .]

We postulate that no reader of Mein Kamp f, no observer of Hitler'sbehavior, character, and policy, could in good faith be of another opinionthan that of Professor Trevor-Roper. Everybody was aware of the fol-lowing :

1 . That Hitler had passionately sought Great Britain's friendship,offering even to defend the British Empire if ever it were in danger ;

2. That he had declared in Mein Kamp f that only idiots or traitors121

122 / The Suicide of Europe

could seriously contemplate Germany's reconquest of her western fron-tiers of before World War I ;

3. That all his dreams and all his ambitions were directed towardthe East, where he was convinced Germany would find her destiny ;

4. That he had never thought of the possibility of a war with France,unless that country, blind to her own interests, were to oppose his actionagainst Soviet Russia-the goal of all his preparations, his thoughts, andhis whole life .When in July 1940, Carol, who had just yielded without a fight

Bessarabia and eastern Bucovina to the Soviets, sent Prime MinisterGigurtu and Minister of Foreign Affairs Manoilescu-who was my pred-ecessor at the Palais Sturdza and who told me the whole incident-toSalzburg with the mission of trying to win Hitler's favor, the two Ru-manian pilgrims tried to convince the Fiihrer that Carol's Rumaniahad adopted almost the same political and social ideals as Hitler's Ger-many. Hitler, after listening attentively, replied that an ideal was abeautiful thing in the life of a country, of a movement, and of a man ;and as an example he gave them in minute detail the history of theLegionary Movement, ending with the assassination of Codreanu andwith the following words : "What I will never forgive your King is thatit is he who forced me to change my policy toward Soviet Russia ."

Hitler did not exaggerate . In the plan of encirclement, immobiliza-tion, and finally destruction of Germany, Rumania was assigned a de-cisive part . Cooperation between the Soviet army and those of Franceand Czecho-Slovakia could not even have been imagined without Ru-mania's consent. Armed Rumanian resistance would have immediatelybrought the Polish armies into action, Soviet aggression being the funda-mental casus foederis of the Polish-Rumanian alliance . Yugoslavia wouldhave entered the fray on the side of Central Europe's defense, andHungary, pushed by Germany, would no doubt have come in also . Ru-mania's willingness alone could have given real political or militaryvalue to a Soviet promise of intervention .

Hitler knew very well that in Rumania all the political factions ex-cept one had abandoned to the King all power and initiative in mattersof international policy. Carol's coup d'etat had evidently had interna-tional implications. It was upon the plea of France and Great Britainthat the Goga Government had been dismissed ; the only ministers fromthe Goga Cabinet who had been kept in the Government of MironCristea were those who had openly professed their fidelity to the alli-ances of World War I : Armand Calinescu, General Ion Antonescu, andGeneral Gavril Marinescu . Hitler also knew that only one importantpolitical group, the Legionary Movement, young, dynamic, prepared forany sacrifice, was opposing and defying Carol on the question of Ru-

Codreanu's Suppression and Hitler's Policy / 123

mania's relations with Soviet Russia. He also knew that in an opendeclaration, written shortly before his incarceration, Codreanu hadwarned the King that Rumania's youth would oppose any Soviet attemptto cross our frontiers .The fact that Carol had Codreanu murdered hours after Carol's re-

turn from London, where he had undoubtedly been summoned in orderto receive the directives of the powers to which he was subjected by hiscupidity and his ambition, could have only one significance : The anti-Munich faction had won, Great Britain was clearing for action, andRumania was going along with Germany's enemies .

Due to the gravity of the situation and the urgency of the menace,urgency that was clearly demonstrated by Codreanu's hasty assassination,Hitler made two speedy decisions : The first was of military character,the occupation of Czecho-Slovakia, which put his motorized divisionswithin twenty-four hours of Rumania's oilfields and within thirty ofthe Danube delta . The second was a bold political decision meant toexplode the Franco-Czecho-Soviet alliance-he would negotiate an under-standing and an economic arrangement with Soviet Russia .

Immediately after the assassination of Codreanu and his comrades,Carol and his men started the hunt for Legionaries and especially forthe leaders who were still at liberty. The High Command of the Move-ment, along with all but one of the Legionaries who had participatedin the Spanish Civil War were already incarcerated in the various pris-ons of Jilava, Dofteana, Ramnic, Mercurea, etc., where they were soonto be the victims of a huge mass execution. A group of Legionaries hadbeen instructed to leave the country, as soon as they could, for Germany ;and here again it was the Polish Government that helped the organizationduring the exodus. The members of the new Legionary staff had founda refuge in the non-Legionary homes of good Rumanians prepared torisk the severe penalties prescribed by the new regulations for suchinfractions .

It was to such a house that my son led me in order to meet GheorghePavelescu, the son of General Pavelescu, who had been left as leader ofthe Bucharest sector . Gheorghe Pavelescu, who was killed in prison a fewmonths later, wanted to ask me just one question : "How do we answerthe murder of Codreanu?" If I had known then what I was to learn afew days later, namely the decision Hitler had been about to make whenhe was informed of Codreanu's murder, I would not have hesitated,perhaps, in giving Pavelescu the answer I already had in mind. I didnot do it because of Christian scruples and patriotic uncertainties . I donot know, even now, i f provoking war in the East when Germany andPoland were still on the same side of the fence-a war that broke outanyway only three years later-would have saved my country from Com-

124 / The Suicide of Europe

munist tyranny and the world of Christian Civilization from the abysstoward which it is now rolling.En route to my diplomatic post in Copenhagen I stopped in Warsaw

and Berlin . In Warsaw, my friend Arciczewski, then Undersecretary atthe Polish Foreign Office, assured me again of the good intentions ofhis Government toward the Legionaries who, abandoning Rumania,were passing through Polish territory, and offered me his house as arefuge in case I had already decided to take a similar course . But this wasnot what my friends had asked me to do . Arciczewski informed me ofhis Government's decision to renew prematurely its pact of nonaggres-sion with Soviet Russia . The wise Arciczewski did not seem any morepleased than I by this decision, which Germany might consider as thenext thing to an act of provocation, and which would not bring Polandany greater guarantee concerning Soviet intentions .In Berlin it was again Captain Weidemann whom I found at the

Reichskanzlei. He told me of Hitler's indignation and wrath uponlearning of Codreanu's murder . He added that Hitler had for a fewdays seriously entertained the idea of sending his divisions throughHungary toward Rumania but finally contented himself with recallingHerr Fabricius, his Minister in Bucharest . I learned later that it washis Generals who dissuaded the Fiihrer. In the book Hitler's Testament,in which his conversations with Martin Bormann in the last days of thewar are recorded with an obvious authenticity, Hitler, talking of thosemoments, expressed his regret at not having then started the war in theEast, when his relations with Poland were still what they had been inthe last years of Pilsudski's life . We believe that Hitler was right, notthe Generals, and that neither France nor Great Britain would havedared to ask from their people the sacrifice of a new and unwanted warwithout the defense of Poland as a pretext .

Once this moment of wrath passed, Hitler decided to continue adopt-ing toward Carol and his Ministers an attitude of pretended ignorance oftheir real intentions, designs, hopes and machinations, and to draw fromthis attitude all the economic benefits offered by Rumania's enormous re-sources . Indeed a few days before Carol's departure for London, Hitlerhad sent him an economic mission to make purchases of as much as possi-ble of Rumania's produce, such as oil and grain, together with a routinetelegram of congratulations for Carol's birthday .

Twenty days after Codreanu's assassination, Grigore Gafencu was ap-pointed Minister of Foreign Affairs ; his administration of Rumania'sinternational interests turned out to be more nefarious than any that hadpreceded it since the departure of Titulescu . It corresponded with a longand stupid attempt to fool Germany about Carol's intentions . Sir Regi-nald Hoare, the British Minister in Bucharest, told me himself during my

Codreanu's Suppression and Hitler's Policy / 125

short passage at the Rumanian Foreign Office that it was with Gafencu'sand the King's consent and help that British, French and American agentsand specialists were preparing for the destruction of Rumania's oilfieldsand oil industry, and the obstruction of the Iron Gates passage on thelower Danube . German Intelligence was of course aware of all this schem-ery and its smallest details, as was to be proved even before Gafencu's res-ignation when the German newspapers published the names of all thosespecialists and agents . Meanwhile Carol and his advisers deluded them-selves into thinking that they were successfully masking their surreptitiousactivities and were fooling the German Government by the establish-ment of the so-called Frontul Renasterei Nationale, the FRN, in August1939 on the model of the National Socialist and the Fascist movements .They even dolled up the chiefs of the former political parties, whowere taught the Roman salute, in the new winter (blue) and summer(white) uniforms, and forcibly enlisted Rumanian young people intothe Straja Tarii, an imitation of National Socialist and Fascist YouthOrganizations.

"Carol," says Mr. Prost, "applied himself to the regimentation ofRumanian young people in order to awake in their souls a love of theircountry." Such an affirmation coming from someone who had spenttwenty years of his life in Rumania is a brazen effrontery and an act ofdiscourtesy towards his readers. It was not the Rumanian young peoplewho needed a lesson in patriotism . And it was not Carol (who had theblood of these young people still on his hands, who was deeply absorbedat that moment with the confiscation and appropriation of the big in-dustrial Auschnitz fortune and other lootings, and who a few weekslater gave up with no fight two Rumanian provinces to the Soviets)who could give the Rumanian youth such a lesson .

Carol's purposes were many. Besides deceiving Berlin and Rome, hewas also trying to deceive the Rumanian youth with the illusion of anidealistic organization similar to that of the Legionary Movement, hop-ing to make them forget what they had suffered at his hands . Carolfailed on both counts. Berlin and Rome were not fooled . Concerning theRumanian youth, let us hear from Mr . Prost :

It was frivolous to hope that the Straja Tarii could victoriously supplantthe Legionary Movement . The Legionaries were convinced that theybelonged to an elite. Their organization, semi-secret, did not accept every-body . The donning of the green shirt was preceded by a religious initiation .They had the feeling of being summoned to a great fight for glory andprofit. The Straja Tarii did not offer anything similar to the schoolboyswho were forced to enlist .1

1 Destin de la Rounsanie, p . 124 .

126 / The Suicide of Europe

Mr. Prost is a bookkeeper by profession, and such is his turn of mindthat it is very difficult for him to understand why the Legionaries wouldhave risked and suffered unflinchingly all that they risked and suffered,if there was not also a little "profit" implied, besides that other thinghe calls "glory ."

Miron Cristea, the Patriarch, who as Prime Minister covered with hiscanonicals all of Carol's abuses, usurpations, and crimes, died in March1939. His successor was Armand Calinescu . Along with the independenceof Slovakia, Bohemia, and the Memelland's occupation by Germany,March and April brought Franco's uninterrupted victories in Spain,Italy's cynical invasion of Albania, the signing of a ten-year German-Italian alliance, and the adhesion of Hungary to the anti-Communistpact. The Government in Bucharest had lost much of its confidence . In-deed, it was in a state of panic that the Crown Council on March 17,1939, proclaimed its decision to defend the country's frontiers whereverthey might be attacked-a more than superfluous announcement if suchhad really been the intention of Carol and his Government .

The rehearsal for a general mobilization, which was ordered a shorttime after, resulted in a total fiasco ; all the deficiencies and shortcomingsof the Rumanian army appeared suddenly for everyone to see and todraw their own conclusions-and they did .

CHAPTERxv

The Phony Guarantees

The measures of "political security" taken by the Calinescu-Gafencu Government were still more disastrous for Rumania than themilitary insecurity in which Carol's corrupt administration had left her .

I am talking about the phony guarantees that this Government askedfor and got from Great Britain and France . I say "phony," since thoseguarantees, given also to Poland, did not cover the eastern frontier ofthe two countries . This was certainly known to our diplomats, and toour King, for it is impossible to believe that our special negotiators andour accredited Ministers would have been so stupid as to fail to askabout the geographic compass of those guarantees, and especially whetherthey included Bessarabia and Bucovina. It is to be remembered that itwas the same King, the same group of politicians and diplomats, whohad refused the German guarantee for those frontiers with the promiseof adequate and sufficient armaments thrown into the bargain .

Titulescu's policy was thereby perpetuated by Calinescu-a policythat was, in our opinion, not only wrong but treasonable, because :

1 . The danger for Rumania and for Europe was not Germany butSoviet Russia .

2. Against this danger we could not count upon the assistance of thosepowers that had saved the Bolshevik Revolution; that had done every-thing in their power to save the regime of Bela Kun in Hungary and aCommunist regime in Spain ; that delivered Kolchak, Kutiepov and Millerto the Soviets; that had helped Soviet Russia build her military establish-ment; that had requested and received a military alliance with Soviet Rus-sia; and that had introduced Russia into the League of Nations in Ger-many's place.

3. The Little Entente and the Balkan alliance did not represent anyguarantee for Rumania . Czecho-Slovakia was, on the contrary, a heavy

127

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handicap to us, all the more so since Prague did not miss any oppor-tunity to provoke its powerful neighbor . We did not need Czecho-Slovakia to defend us against Hungary, nor did we need Turkey orGreece to defend us against Bulgaria .

4. The Hungarian revendications represented a danger to Rumaniaonly if they were backed by Germany . The refusal in 1934 to acceptGermany's guarantees of our frontiers with Hungary and with SovietRussia had been a crime against Rumania's security .

5. There was only one power in the world that could have defendedus, and defended Europe, against the Soviet and Communist menace,and this was Germany, restored to her prewar political and militarystatus. We recommend that those who think we are wrong take a lookat a political map of today's Europe, of Asia, Africa, Oceania, and notoverlook Cuba, where the Soviets are building a powerful garrison andstockpiling assorted armaments under the very nose of the United States .

6. The argument of our fidelity to our old alliances was not sincere,or was not seriously examined . The war toward which Europe and theworld were shoved by forces friendly to the Soviets and hostile to theGermans was not the war of France or Great Britain . Large politicalgroups and important personalities in those two countries were alsoopposed to this war, the war for the collapse of the British and theFrench empires, for the end of those two countries as great internationalpowers, and for a short North American pseudo hegemony .

7. This pseudo hegemony was inevitably destined also to collapseunder the pressure and infiltration of European and Asiatic Communismand with the collapse of Japan and Germany, the only two real barriersagainst this pressure and this infiltration .

8. Fidelity toward our former allies should have prompted us to useall our influence to make them understand the danger and pitfalls of thecourse they had chosen . This was all the more true with regard toPoland, as directly exposed as Rumania to the Soviet danger, and towardwhom we had not only the right but the duty to consult and advise .We had cowardly abandoned this right and duty when our Ambassador,Mr. Franasovici, was ordered to leave Warsaw at the most dangerousmoment of the German-Polish crisis .'

The Ribbentrop-Molotov understanding was signed August 23, 1939 .It was, on both sides, a tactical move, une ruse de guerre . Both sidesknew it, and the Western Powers knew it also. The Western Powersknew that the Soviets would be on their side before the end of the war .

1 I have it from a most authoritative source that no political directive whatever wassent from Bucharest to our Embassy in Warsaw, and no political information or sug-gestion was sent from our Embassy in Warsaw to Bucharest from the end of August15, 1939, until the end of the hostilities in Poland and the evacuation of the Polish Gov-ernment to Bucharest. In Bucharest there was complete and absolute indifference tothe fate of our unhappy ally .

The Phony Guarantees / 129

That was why they did not declare war on Soviet Russia as they did onGermany when Russia invaded Poland and the Baltic States, and thatwas why they did not guarantee the eastern borders of Poland andRumania .The Ribbentrop-Molotov understanding, which authorized the occu-

pation of Bessarabia by the Soviets, was invoked after the fact as anexcuse for our anti-German attitude. For Hitler, who knew that histroops would soon expel the Soviet armies not only from Bessarabiabut from the whole of the Ukraine, a momentary Soviet dominationin this province did not have great importance ; for the population ofBessarabia and Bucovina, however, this temporary domination rep-resented the greatest tragedy those embattled territories had knownin their history . The responsibility for this tragedy belongs entirely toKing Carol and to all those who controlled our foreign policy between1931 and 1940.

Germany had offered to guarantee all our frontiers, including thoseadjacent to Soviet Russia, and to arm us thoroughly-an obviouslysincere proposition as it coincided entirely with Germany's interest . Wehad scornfully refused even to consider it . There was a last attempt onHitler's part to secure at least the neutrality of Rumania in the impend-ing conflict and perhaps even the collaboration of this country of twentymillion inhabitants and of important material resources . In April 1939,four months before the signing of the Ribbentrop-Molotov arrange-ment, he invited Mr. Grigore Gafencu, our Foreign Minister, to visitBerlin .Mr. Gafencu left for Berlin with the firm determination to concen-

trate his efforts on a program of action absolutely contrary to Hitler'shopes, and with the childish illusion that he could conceal his anti-German activities under the masquerade of the uniform of the FRN,the pseudo nationalist party that Carol's police had rapidly organizedin Rumania. In Berlin Mr. Gafencu was warned courteously but firmlyof the dangers for his country of further commitments with Germany'sprospective adversaries-as, for instance, any formal "guarantee" askedby or accepted from those adversaries . From Berlin Mr. Gafencu wentto Paris and London, where of course, he changed back into his mufti .If the German Government did not learn immediately what was negoti-ated there, it was informed thoroughly a few weeks later when it dis-covered, and followed step by step, the proceedings and preparation ofthe demolition team expertly directed by one Vanger-a man of severalcitizenships-at the oilfields in Ploesti and of the obstructing team at theIron Gates.2

' The reader, no doubt, remembers the way Germany's insistent proposals to guar-antee our frontiers and to rearm our forces had been constantly spurned by Carol andhis Governments. Grigore Gafencu, who was then Rumania's Minister of Foreign Af-

130 / The Suicide of Europe

The German Government learned immediately-as I did throughSignor Giuseppe Sapuppo and Herr Cecil von Renthe-Fink, my Italianand German colleagues in Copenhagen-of the foolish attempt of Mr.Gafencu in Rome of convincing Mussolini and Count Ciano that Italy'sinterest was on the side of the Western Powers, and of selling them theidea of a Latin axis with France and Rumania .

Count Ciano's answer, as reported to me later by Alexandru DuiliuZamfirescu, our Minister in Rome, was very much to the point : "Listencarefully to what I tell you. Give up the idea of securing guaranteesfrom France and Great Britain, which in any case have no value foryou, and nothing will happen to Rumania. But you can not even im-agine how badly you will end up if you persist in your attempts in thatdirection."Mr. Gafencu went back to Bucharest convinced that he had fooled

the Fiihrer. Carol shared Gafencu's optimism and answered those whotried to show him the perils of his double-dealings : "Germany is verypleased with me." Hitler had decided to oppose Carol's play with thesame duplicity, but soon was to hit back with all his brutality . It was agreat mistake-a mistake for which Germany paid very dearly-to pun-ish Carol by maiming Rumania territorially, and therefore militarilyand morally; for Rumania was Hitler's only possible important ally onthe Eastern Front . But it was treasonous for Carol and his Ministers toprod Hitler into committing this error .Such was the state of material, political and moral unpreparedness ;

of decay of willpower ; of childish and felonious scheming in which

fairs, tells us in his book, The Last Days of Europe, of the last efforts of Hitler andGoring to secure from Rumania the promise that she would oppose any attempt ofSoviet troops to cross her territory . Hitler had invited Gafencu to Berlin in April 1939in still another attempt to avoid the necessity of a repugnant but unavoidable ar-rangement with Soviet Russia; an arrangement whose first victims would be Poland,Finland, the Baltic States, and Rumania . On April 18 Goring told Gafencu : "If Ru-mania is our friend, we wish her to be great and powerful . If she joins the policy ofencirclement, we will abandon her to the covetousness of her neighbors ." Hitler toldhim the next day, after a long exhortation : "As long as I can count upon Rumania'sfriendship, I will never lend a hand to any vindication directed against her territory ."Gafencu's answer to those last warnings, after visits to Paris and London, was to hastenback to Rumania and prepare the sabotaging of some of Germany's most importantmilitary and economic interests in the East .

There was still another attempt from Germany's side, on the very eve of the sign-ing of the Ribbentrop-Molotov Agreement . On or about August 12, 1939 Fabricius,the German Envoy in Bucharest, phoned Gheorghe Bratianu that he had been in-structed by Marshal Goring to ask him earnestly to try once more to convince KingCarol and his Government of the necessity to give Germany, without delay, the guar-antee that the Red Army would not be allowed to cross Rumanian territory . In theabsence of such a guarantee, added Goring, there would occur a change in Germany'sforeign policy very detrimental to Rumania's interests. The warning was transmitted ;Carol and his ministers refused to pay any attention to it .

The Phony Guarantees / 131

Rumania was about to face a storm from which only the strongheartedand the brave could hope to come out alive .

I did not have any illusion concerning the ability of our politicalleaders to confront the intricacies and dangers of the times we werefacing. The news I was receiving from Rumania and the information Ihad received in Copenhagen from my colleagues from the two opposedcamps did not give me any reason for giving up my pessimism . Reasonsfor hope I found only on my short visit to Berlin with the Legionarieswho had been instructed to gather there . They were planning, andpreparing materially as well as they could, an answer to treason and alast attempt to save all that could still be saved of the fortunes of a countryfor which each of them would have gladly given his life . It was therethat I met Horia Sima for the first time, the young man of penetratingeyes, of orderly thoughts, of the broad and steady vision of a real states-man, who was to be the leader of this last attempt . 3Mrs. Codreanu, the widow of the murdered Captain, and Father

Borcea, the Chaplain of the group of Legionaries who had fought inSpain, were, under other names, the standing guests of the RumanianLegation in Copenhagen. Father Borcea was the only Spanish fighterwho had escaped Carol's massacres. Mrs. Codreanu told us the strangestory of a postcard she had received from Cairo, signed with the nick-name by which she called her husband and with his handwriting per-fectly reproduced, in which she was told not to worry . This remindedme of a mysterious message I had received a few days after Codreanu'sassassination, purported to have been written in the Dofteana prisonby a Legionary. This message stated that Codreanu and his companionshad been safely brought to the prison, and asked us not to take any falsesteps .Creating confusion about whether or not a murder had been com-

mitted seems to be a tactic of a certain kind of political assassination . Astriking example of this ritual was the famous case of the false Anastasia ;and because I had a firsthand opportunity in Copenhagen to form anunshakable opinion about this case, I mention it here .

Throughout our stay in Copenhagen my wife, my son, and I werehonored by the friendship of a saint : Grand Duchess Olga, sister of themurdered Czar and, therefore, the aunt of Grand Duchess Anastasia .

a Horia Sima was thirty at the time, and a professor of literature . He had been headof the Legionary organization in Banat province, but had taken refuge in Berlin afterthe assassination of Codreanu . He became leader of the group in Berlin by sheer forceof personality. In May 1940, Sima returned to Rumania, clandestinely, in order to pre-pare for the overthrow of King Carol .

132 The Suicide of Europe

Grand Duchess Olga would have given her last penny to anyone in needof it; she had in money and material goods the naYvete and the dis-interest of the grande dame she was by birth and by nature . On herlittle farm in Knuts Minde she worked like a hired hand-milking hercows, feeding her pigs, manuring her field . No invitation was needed toKnuts Minde ; it was home for every Russian refugee who happened topass by, and of course for her old friends, who were attracted by herwarmth, her intelligence and her interesting presence .Grand Duchess Olga was in Copenhagen with her mother, the old

Czarina, when rumors spread suddenly that a person who pretended tobe Grand Duchess Anastasia had reached Germany . Ardently eager toknow the truth, Grand Duchess Olga rushed to Berlin and an interviewwith that person was quickly arranged by the Danish Legation . GrandDuchess Olga received the unknown girl in her hotel room . The personshe saw bore absolutely no physical resemblance to Grand DuchessAnastasia, nor did she know any facts going back to Anastasia's child-hood that would have established her identity . Not only did she notspeak German, French and English, which Anastasia had spoken fairlywell or fluently ; she did not speak Russian, but only Ukrainian.

Grand Duchess Olga, always prepared to find the most indulgent in-terpretation for her fellow humans' behavior, did not exclude the possi-bility that the false Anastasia might be a psychotic case, convinced ofthe truth of what she pretended . Grand Duchess Olga treated the girl ac-cordingly, received her twice, fed, and helped her .Grand Duchess Olga and her mother did not give any more impor-

tance to the Anastasia case. People who have known these two ladies andwho know of the interview of Grand Duchess Olga with the false Anas-tasia could not continue to propagate this imposture without accusingtwo ladies who were Charity itself of being able to abandon to materialmisery and mental torture the very person they would have been calledto help by every law of nature and every Christian feeling .

sOn August 24, the day the alarmed world was informed of the Rib-

bentrop-Molotov Agreement, several of the Ministers accredited to Copen-hagen were lunching with us at the Rumanian Legation . The Britishand Polish Ministers were exchanging words of encouragement . "Theybelieve, perhaps, that something has changed!" the popular Sir PatrickRamsay was saying. "Nothing has changed!" answered Minister Stargew-ski, his heart aching with anxiety for his beloved country .

"How long do you think we could resist if Germany attacked us?" thePolish Minister suddenly asked me . I answered: "Two months if you had

The Phony Guarantees / 133

to deal only with the Germans . You could not resist at all if you had toface a German attack and a Russian menace ."

The fact is that a lot had changed for the worst, for Poland, Europeand for the world, Germany included, with the German-Soviet pactof nonaggression and of friendship . It was the duty of every govern-ment, every statesman, every diplomat, who pretended to be a friendof Poland to point out to her leaders the dangers of the new situation,and to prompt them to a radical change in their recently adopted in-transigent attitude . I almost had an altercation with the newly appointedUnited States Minister in Copenhagen-a gentleman whose name Ihave forgotten, but who was formerly United States Minister in Sofia-because of my pessimistic prognosis concerning Poland's fate if shepersisted in the policy that London, Paris and Washington were advis-ing her to follow . 4 If our Ambassador in Warsaw, instead of leaving atthe critical moment, had expressed the same pessimism, with all theauthority of our Government behind him, and he had insistently ad-vised our allies accordingly, he could have perhaps succeeded in counter-ing the pressure of the Western Powers .

The betrayal of Poland had already started.

Fishing for the powerful tuna in Skagerrak off Snekesten was theway we used to quiet impatience and worries, where we could forgetabout reporting, ciphering, deciphering and the febrile reading of news-papers. That was where the afternoon of September 1, 1939, found me,hooked to one of those giant fishes, which was leading our boat inlarge zigzags all over the waters of the strait. Suddenly three slim andmajestic Dorniers with the Iron Cross emblem passed westward boundin arrow formation low over our heads. Another angler was sailing ourway. It was Prince Axel of Denmark, who shouted from his boat to us :"Warl It is warl"

I cut loose from my tireless tuna and hastened toward shore .* When taking leave of me, the new United States Minister's predecessor, Alvin M .

Owsley, my congenial American colleague, told me with conviction: "Our hour willcome, and after that you will look in vain for Germany on the map of Europe ."

CHAPTER

XVI

The First Betrayal of Poland

It was a strange story that J6zef Lipski, Poland's Ambassadorin Berlin, told us on his way through Copenhagen after the rupture ofdiplomatic relations between Poland and Germany . This story has beencompletely confirmed through the publication of official documents bythe two opposed parties ."Have you seen Ribbentrop yet? Don't you know that he has been

waiting for you since the day before yesterday, and that this evening isthe deadline he mentioned for the beginning of the negotiations withPoland?" This is how Robert Coulondre, the French Ambassador, brisklyaddressed Mr. Lipski on August 31, 1939, mentioning that he had re-ceived this information by chance from British Embassy circles . Lipskianswered that he had seen Sir Nevile Henderson, the British Ambassa-dor, the same day at two o'clock in the morning, and that this diplomathad not mentioned Ribbentrop's wishes and the deadline attached tothem . Lipski, realizing the gravity of this unexplained negligence ofthe British Ambassador, immediately asked for an interview with theGerman Foreign Minister, which was granted without delay .From Nevile Henderson's Final Report (No. 55) it becomes clear that

not only did the British Ambassador not warn Lipski that he was ex-pected up until twelve midnight (the meeting with Lipski and Hendersonwas at two a.m ., August 31), but Henderson advised Lipski against seeingRibbentrop at all : "I saw, however, the Polish Ambassador at two o'clocka.m. I gave him a brief account, studiously moderate, of my conversationwith Herr v. Ribbentrop . . . [and] suggested that he recommend to hisGovernment an interview between Marshals 9migly-Rydz and Goring. Ifelt obliged to add that I could not conceive the success of any negotia-tions if they were conducted by Herr v . Ribbentrop ." Although Cou-londre, the French Ambassador, at least had the honesty to inform Lipski

134

The First Betrayal of Poland / 135

that he was expected by Ribbentrop before midnight, he does not seemto have been very eager either that such a meeting should bring an under-standing between the two interlocutors . For, according to Lipski (PolishWhite Book, Document No . 109), Coulondre advised him to get in con-tact with Ribbentrop only after twelve o'clock . Advice that Lipski wiselydisregarded .Ambassador Lipski was received at the Wilhelmstrasse with all the

honors due an envoy extraordinary . A company of honor presentedarms, the Polish national anthem was sung, and Ribbentrop greetedhim with the effusion of an old friend, exclaiming happily, "At last,we can negotiatel" This oversight of the British Ambassador, which wasto have historical consequences, had not given Lipski the time or theopportunity to explain the situation to his Government ; so he had totell Ribbentrop that he was not provided with the necessary specialmandate. Deeply shocked, Ribbentrop told Lipski that he would com-municate this fact to Hitler . Thus ended the interview that could havespared Europe and the world the disaster of a war between non-Commu-nist powers.It may strike the reader as highly irregular that Ribbentrop should

send his invitations to Lipski through the British Ambassador, ratherthan directly to Lipski . However, this latter course was impossible .

On August 4, 1939, Poland issued an ultimatum, which was based on afalse rumor, to Germany, to which Germany replied with a most vehe-ment answer. This followed a speech which had been delivered by JozefBeck, the Polish Foreign Minister, to the Polish Parliament on May 5,1939. In this speech Beck had taken the initiative to break off any directnegotiations with Germany . Therefore, as both Ribbentrop and BaronWeizsacker, German Undersecretary of State, told Sir Nevile Henderson,"a German initiative was unthinkable" (British Blue Book No . 75) . Fur-thermore, one must not forget that as early as May 1939, Lipski had beenordered not to accept, orally or in writing, even as an agent of transmis-sion, any German proposals, much less discuss them . Nevertheless, Rib-bentrop did take the final initiative, and although it would have been un-thinkable for him to contact Lipski directly, Ribbentrop had every reasonto believe that his repeated invitations, of August 26 and of August 28,would be transmitted to Lipski by the British Ambassador .

However, as mentioned already, even if Ribbentrop had followed theregular procedures, it would have availed him nothing. From a telegram ofLord Halifax to Sir Nevile Henderson (British Blue Book, Document No .82, August 30, 1939) : "Could you not suggest to the German Governmentto adopt the normal procedure, to notify the Polish Ambassador when theconditions have been drawn up, and hand them over to him to be trans-mitted to Warsaw?" From Sir Howard Kennard, British Ambassador in

136 / The Suicide of EuropeWarsaw, to Lord Halifax (British Blue Book Document No . 96, August31, 1939): "I have asked Mr . Beck what attitude the Polish Ambassador[in Berlin] would adopt if Herr von Ribbentrop, the person who had re-ceived him, would hand over to him the German propositions . Mr. Becktold me that Mr. Lipski would not be authorized to accept such a docu-ment." [Italics added] .The reader might ask why Hitler did not wait longer before invading

Poland. Actually, he had carried on friendly, courteous, insistent negotia-tions and proposals from February 1938 right until the very end. Thesewere brutally interrupted by Beck's speech of May 5, 1939 . A speech whichBeck was forced to deliver, against his will, by ~migly-Rydz, Marshal ofPoland, and by President Ignacy Mokcicki . After this, further negotiationswere impossible . But for the actual situation in Germany, let us quotefrom Sir Nevile Henderson's Final Report : "It was the opinion of themilitary advisers that counted more than anything else with Hitler . I havealways been of the opinion that it was those advisers who convinced himto establish a protectorate in Bohemia. It was the same advisers that toldHitler that any new delay would be fatal and that the bad season in Po-land might upset all their plans for a rapid campaign [which was vital be-cause of the possibility of England and France invading Germany in theWest]. The Army fought with him about this even during the week ofAugust 25 to September 1 . " 1

The truth is that not only did Sir Nevile Henderson take the responsi-bility of concealing from his Polish colleague the message with whichhe had been entrusted by Ribbentrop, but that Sir Howard Kennard,the British Ambassador in Warsaw, had received, along with the newsof this message, instructions not to communicate it to the Polish Gov-ernment .The anti-Munich faction had triumphed at Downing Street, and

Neville Chamberlain, defeated, was nothing more than a tool in itshands. This is how Jorgen Bast, a gentleman of anti-German persuasion,and correspondent for the Berlingske Tidende, commented on the situ-ation :

When he left [for Munich], Mr. Chamberlain had seen all his cabinetaccompanying him to the airport and wishing him good luck on hismission. At his return nearly all the British people welcomed him .Thousands upon thousands of people lined the way from Huston toBuckingham Palace, where the King and Queen received him warmly .

The King asked him to appear at the balcony with the Queen and Mrs .Chamberlain. New ovations accompanied him to Downing Street, wherefrom a window on the second floor the tired statesman shouted to thecrowd: "My dear friends [I bring] peace with honor . I believe it is peacefor our time!"1 From the official British translation in French .

The First Betrayal o f Poland / 137

Such was Mr. Chamberlain's hope that day . He was soon to feel, however,the thorns concealed among the roses of Munich . The same day, LordAdmiral Duff Cooper resigned because he could not accept the Munichagreement, and this was only the beginning of a fierce struggle . Strangerstill : the same Prime Minister who had shouted his conviction that peacewas guaranteed for one generation declared thirteen days later in the Houseof Commons that the consequences of Munich for Great Britain could notbe anything else than "Arming! Arming! Arming!"

Let us remember that Chamberlain's bellicose speech of October 13,1938, and his speeches of January 23 and 28, 1939, were delivered beforethe occupation of Czecho-Slovakia by the Germans .In my book written in 1943, La Bete sans Nom, I explored, with a

profusion of documentation, the question of the responsibility concern-ing World War II, a war that started over the defense of Danzig and ofthe Polish Corridor. I did not know then that my conclusions were tobe tragically confirmed by the surrender into Soviet hands of the wholeof Poland along with nine other European countries .

My conclusions were as follows :1 . The Corridor and Danzig had been only pretexts . Poland had been

knowingly pushed-by the phony guarantees of Great Britain andFrance, by the most unrealizable promises, and by the most deceptivetricks-into a war from which the responsible cliques in London, Wash-ington, and Paris knew very well she could not emerge alive and free .

2. The British Government, which had suddenly taken the directionof those opposed to the Munich settlement, had been backed throughoutall of its activities, by the Washington Government or, more accurately,by the dark and grim coterie surrounding the incapacitated President ; acoterie firmly determined not to lose what was perhaps its last oppor-tunity to provoke war against Germany and to save, thereby, Soviet Rus-sia and Communism from almost certain annihilation .

3. The British Government and its Ambassadors in Berlin and War-saw-obviously under instructions-had done everything possible toencourage Poland not to accept the moderate German proposal of Oct-ober 24, 1938, and to ignore completely the very acceptable conditionsoffered by Ribbentrop in the last phase of the dispute ."Poland had started toward war when Beck received the encourage-

ment of London, which seemed to imply also the support of Paris,"reported Anatole de Monzie, Minister in the French War Cabinet, inhis book Ci-Devant . Serious warning had not failed, however, to reachPoland's Government. In his report of March 29, 1939, Juliusz Luka-sievici, Polish Ambassador to Paris, wrote :

It is childish, naive and at the same time disloyal on the part of GreatBritain to ask a country that is in Poland's situation to jeopardize itsrelations with a neighbor as powerful as Germany, and to throw the

138 / The Suicide o f Europe

world into the catastrophe of a war, just to satisfy the inner politicalnecessity of Mr. Neville Chamberlain .

The November 28, 1938, report of Count Jerzy Potocki, the PolishAmbassador in Washington, was no less alarming :

Ambassador [William C.] Bullitt told me that only a war could stop Ger-many's expansion in Europe . As I asked him how he imagined this futurewar would evolve . He answered that, first of all, the United States, Franceand Great Britain ought to arm massively . Only then, the situation beingripe, should the decisive step be taken . I asked him how the conflict couldbe provoked, as Germany very likely would never attack France or GreatBritain. I could not see the connecting point in this combination . . . .Bullitt answered that it was the wish of the democratic countries that Ger-many should eventually get into a conflict in the east .

It is strange that the Polish Government did not grasp the purpose ofthe maneuver, to which Lukasievici alluded and which was so pre-cisely described by Mr . Bullitt; and that, instead, it fell into the trap ofthe promise of unconditional military assistance offered by Great Britain(in her own name and in the name of France) at the very moment whenGermany was offering Poland an arrangement that was the only trueguarantee of Poland's national survival .

Here is how on March 31, 1939, before the British Parliament, NevilleChamberlain formulated this promise of unconditional assistance, equiv-alent to an undated British declaration of war on Germany, entrusted toPoland, to be produced the moment Poland chose to produce it .

As this House knows, certain consultations with other governments arepresently taking place . To make the position of the Government of HisMajesty [King George VI] perfectly clear before the end of those consulta-tions, I must immediately inform this House that if any action were toendanger Polish independence, and if the Polish Government were to thinkit of vital interest to resist with its national forces, His Majesty's Govern-ment would consider itself immediately obliged to come to the assistance ofthe Polish Government with all the means at its disposal . I may add thatthe French Government has authorized me to affirm clearly that its attitudeis identical with ours in this matter .

On July 10 of this same year, 1939, when an armed conflict betweenGermany and Poland seemed an imminent possibility, Mr . Chamberlain,in order to deny the tragic responsibility taken by Great Britain, foundit necessary to make some subtle distinctions concerning the order ofevents :

When the German Government made certain offers to Poland in March1939, offers which were accompanied by a press campaign, the Polish Gov-

The First Betrayal o f Poland / 139

ernment realized that it might very soon find itself confronted by an attemptat a military solution that Poland would have to oppose by all means at itsdisposal . . . . On March 25, it took certain military dispositions and on the28th it sent its answer to Berlin . I ask the Parliament to take good noticeof those two days . It has been openly asserted in Germany that it was theBritish guarantee that had encouraged the Polish Government to undertakethe mentioned action . I must point out that our guarantee was given onlyon March 31 .

This attempt at misrepresentation must have cost Mr. Chamberlain,an honest gentleman by nature, almost as much mortification as hisfinal imposture the day Britain declared war on Germany . As officialPolish documents reveal, on March 21 Sir Howard Kennard proposed toPoland a military alliance with France, Great Britain, and Soviet Russia .On March 20 Lord Halifax had informed the House of Lords that theBritish Government "has hastened to consult in an intimate and practi-cal way with other governments that were interested in the presentproblem." It would be absurd to think that Poland was not among theconsulted governments.

The interval from March 28 to March 31 in no way substantiated thealibi Mr. Chamberlain was trying to establish . Everybody knew GreatBritain's general attitude towards Germany in that hour ; everybodyknew the negotiations in which she was engaged in Paris, in Moscowand, most especially, in Warsaw ; and nobody could believe that the un-interrupted conversations between the British and Polish Governmentshad not touched on the question of British military assistance-even ifLord Halifax's declarations and Polish documents had not given the lieto the British Prime Minister .We must point to another and still more important error in Mr .

Chamberlain's speech of July 10, 1939 . The German proposal to Po-land of March 1939 was not the first . There was a standing proposaloffered to the Polish Government on October 24, 1938, in Berchtesgaden,by Herr Ribbentrop to Mr. Lipski . Its terms were as follows :

1 . The free state of Danzig was to return to the German Reich .2. An extraterritorial highway and railway line with several tracks

was to be constructed through the Polish Corridor.3. In the Danzig territory Poland was to have an extraterritorial high-

way and railway line and a free port .4. Poland was to receive a guarantee for the distribution of her goods

in the Danzig territory.5. The two nations were to recognize and guarantee each other's

frontiers and respective territories .6. The German-Polish treaty was to be prolonged from ten to twenty

years .

140 / The Suicide of Europe

7. The two countries were to add a consultative clause to the treaty .Today anyone can assess the responsibility assumed by those who en-

couraged Warsaw to refuse even to discuss this proposal, a proposal opento Poland for more than a year. Was the German proposal, which wasread by Herr Ribbentrop to Sir Nevile Henderson on the evening ofAugust 30, 1939, much more severe? Sir Nevile himself has given us theanswer in his Final Report : The terms "are in general not too unreason-able." 2Actually, the new German proposal was perfectly equitable, or in any

case worthy of consideration . Why should Sir Nevile have intentionallyconcealed from his Polish colleague the fact that the German ForeignMinister was awaiting him in order to discuss them, and that the deadlinefor those discussions had been extended for a second time by twenty-fourhours?

These were the new German conditions :1. Danzig was to be German .2. Gdynia was to be Polish .3. An international administration was to be established for one year

in the Corridor .4. A plebiscite under the control of this administration was to be

established at the end of the year .5. An extraterritorial highway one kilometer wide was to be placed

at the disposition of Germany should the Corridor become Polish .6. An extraterritorial highway one kilometer wide was to run toward

Gdynia should the Corridor become German .7. Privileges and special rights were to be established in Danzig and

Gdynia on the basis of reciprocity.8. Both ports were to be demilitarized .9. Germany was to accept the principle of exchange of populations .z Besides his Final Report, Sir Nevile Henderson also published his memoirs . The

Foreign Office immediately stopped their distribution . Why? Concerning Hitler's finalproposals to Poland, which would have been handed by Herr Ribbentrop to Mr . Lipskion the evening of the thirty-first at 6 :15 p .m. had Lipski's government not forbiddenhim to accept any such document, here are the comments of Pierre and Renee Gosset,authors of Hitler, a classic in anti-Hitler literature (page 170 of the Spanish edition) :"Nevertheless, he [Henderson] understood enough to realize that it was a propositionof extreme moderation based on a plebiscite. . . . This was an offer that no Westernstatesman could have rejected in good faith ." It has been objected that Ribbentrop didnot permit Henderson to take the written proposals with him . This is a futile point,for the full text of those moderate proposals was sent by Goring to Sir Nevile nextmorning . Henderson could have immediately passed them to the Polish Ambassador-if such had been the spirit of London's instructions . Furthermore, the British Govern-ment had almost twenty-four hours in which to exercise the necessary pressure on thePolish Government. Contrary to Pierre and Renee Gosset's affirmation, nothing wasdone in that direction; and, as we know, after his last interview with Ribbentrop, SirNevile Henderson met his Polish colleague but did not communicate to him the factthat Ribbentrop was expecting him.

The First Betrayal of Poland / 141

10. Should there be an agreement, there was to be a general demobili-zation .

At no moment did Herr Ribbentrop specify that these conditions werenot negotiable .3

It is interesting to recall what had been said about Germany's direc-tion, under the Treaty of Versailles, June 1919, by those who were nowprepared to throw the world into another catastrophe for Danzig andthe Corridor .On November 29, 1919, Winston Churchill insistently requested from

the House of Commons :

. . . the satisfaction of the legitimate revendications of the defeated, es-pecially concerning the Corridor and Danzig . Failing which, contrary to ourwishes and our interests, we could be led into a war to correct the errorsand satisfy the revendications that disrupt Europe today.

British Prime Minister Lloyd George wrote in 1919 in a memorandumfor the conference of Versailles :

Peace can be assured only if motives of exasperation, continually exaltingfeelings of justice and honor, were to exist no more. . . . That is why I amfirmly opposed to the submission-unless it is absolutely necessary-of Ger-mans to foreign domination . The proposition of the Polish committee toput 2,000,000 Germans under the laws of a people of another religion, apeople that have proved through history their ineptitude for governing is,in my opinion, liable to provoke a new war .

In January 1936 before the British Parliament, Sir Austen Chamber-lain, a declared enemy of all things German, expressed his convictionthat :

Great Britain would not move a finger to defend the Corridor, a regionin which none of its interests were at stake .

In June 1932 in the House of Lords, Lord Noel-Buxton had drawn theattention of his colleagues to the treatment inflicted on the German pop-ulation in Poland :'We quote Ambassador Lipski's report to his Government from the Polish White

Book :August 31, 1939

Received : 10 o'clock p .m .I have been received by Herr v. Ribbentrop at 6 :30 p .m. I followed the instructions

I had received. Herr v . Ribbentrop has asked me if I was empowered to negotiate [deconduire des ndgociations], I answered that I was not. He asked me if I had been in-formed that, upon London's suggestions, the German Government had declared thatit was ready to negotiate directly with a representative of the Polish Government . Ianswered that I had no direct information on the subject . Concluding Herr v . Ribben-trop told me that he believed that I was authorised to negotiate . He will communicatemy visit to the Chancellor . [Italics added.]

LIPSKI

142 / The Suicide o f Europe

Lord D'Abernon has recently described Danzig and the Corridor as thepowder keg of Europe . . . . The gravity of the situation proceeds princi-pally from the way the German population is treated by the Poles. . . .The question of the German population in Poland is a question very urgentand serious. Since the annexation, more than 1,000,000 Germans have leftthe Corridor because the conditions of living were intolerable for them .

These were the circumstances that prompted Chancellor Gustav Stre-semann and all the German Chancellors before Hitler to refuse anyconcession or declaration that could have been interpreted as an ac-knowledgment of the stipulation of the Versailles Treaty concerningPoland, the Corridor and Danzig. The leader of integral nationalismin Germany was the first German statesman who admitted publicly andformally the "Polish fact" as an irrevocable contingency, and the firstwho proposed an arrangement, a generous arrangement, for the openproblems between Berlin and Warsaw.

Poor Chamberlain! The same powers that had made him abandon,after a resistance of only a few days and without any visible reason, thepacific, patriotic, and humane consideration approved unanimously bythe British people, brought this scrupulously honest statesman to theradio broadcast of September 4, 1939, in which every assertion wasfalse and in which he tried to explain to the British people why he wasengaging the British Empire in a frightening and incalculable adven-ture.

The so-called German proposals were made to the Polish AmbassadorThursday the thirty-first in the evening, two hours before the German Gov-ernment announced that they had been refused. Far from having been re-fused, there had been no time to consider them . . . . The Polish representa-tive was told to come at a fixed moment to sign a document that he hadnot even seen. This was not negotiating, but dictating) No governmentconscious of its dignity and of its power could have submitted to such meth-ods. Negotiations in conditions of equality could have had quite differentresults.

Friendly negotiations between Germany and Poland could have startedin 1938 over the first formal German proposals, had Poland so desired .

On August 29, 1939 Sir Nevile Henderson received from Hitler andreported to London the assurance that Germany was ready to negotiatewith Poland under the conditions suggested by Great Britain herself :that security be given to Poland relative to her vital interests, and thatthe final agreement be internationally guaranteed. The acceptance byHitler of these two conditions was never communicated to Mr . Lipskiby Sir Nevile Henderson . Germany waited for a Polish negotiator-whocould have been the Polish Ambassador in Berlin-until August 31 attwelve o'clock . The time limit for negotiation had even been prolonged,

The First Betrayal of Poland / 143

at Britain's suggestion, for twenty-four hours . However, Sir Nevile Hen-derson had taken it upon himself to keep his Polish colleague in totalignorance of the situation during the entire forty-eight hours .A general idea of the German proposition had been given to the

British Ambassador during his interview with Hitler and had been com-municated to London on August 29 in the evening. The detailed condi-tions were read to Sir Nevile the night of August 30 at twelve o'clockand were transmitted to London immediately .

Of even greater importance is the fact that Sir Howard Kennard hadinformed his Government-in time to permit wiser advice to be given tothe Polish Government-that Mr. Lipski had received an order not to ac-cept any document from the hands of Herr Ribbentrop, should theGerman Foreign Minister try to acquaint Lipski with the proposed Ger-man conditions for a settlement .

The German Government, far from having insisted that those condi-tions be signed without even being read, had assured Mr . Chamberlainon August 29, via Hitler himself, and as reported by Sir Nevile Hender-son, that the negotiations would take place as between equals . We main-tain that these assurances were never communicated to AmbassadorLipski or to the Polish Government.

There are also some interesting omissions in the British official publi-cations. We read in the Foreign Office Blue Book :

[Dr. Carl] Burckhardt, High Commissioner of the League of Nations inDanzig, accepted Hitler's invitation to visit Hitler in Berchtesgaden . There-fore, Mr. Burckhardt had a private conversation with Hitler on August 11during which one may suppose that the question of Danzig was discussedin relation to the general situation in Europe .

This information omits the most important part of the interview-thepart that concerns the British Government and the pacifying ways inwhich it could have intervened in the German-Polish situation, especiallyin the Danzig question .I met Mr. Burckhardt in the home of our mutual friend Mr. Helmer

Rosting, the former's predecessor in Danzig . Burckhardt told us thatHitler, who knew that Burckhardt had the confidence of the BritishGovernment, had asked him to use his influence to persuade Chamber-lain to send him someone with whom he, the Fiihrer, could talk directlyand openly . Hitler suggested General Ironside, with whom he could havetalked in German .From Berchtesgaden Burckhardt went to London, where he had the

opportunity to transmit Hitler's request to Neville Chamberlain . ThePrime Minister rejected it immediately, arguing that Sir Nevile Hender-son was the British Ambassador in Berlin . It is true that Mr. Chamber-

144 / The Suicide of Europe

lain was not obligated to comply with Hitler's demand ; but the prob-lems at stake were of such importance, and the desire of the head of theGerman state was expressed so insistently, that it is difficult to under-stand how Chamberlain could have passed up this opportunity to dis-cover exactly what were Hitler's intentions, and to come, perhaps, to asettlement with him. Chamberlain's rebuttal was even less understand-able in view of the fact that this same General Ironside was sent to Mos-cow a short time later, where Great Britain also had an Ambassador .The General's mission was to negotiate a military alliance with theSoviets, directed, of course, against Germany .

CHAPTER

XVII

Danger of Peace-Massacre of the Legionaries

Great Britain's firm decision to fight Germany was to revealitself twice more in the first days of September 1939 .

Only hours after the outbreak of hostilities between Germany andPoland, Mussolini, renewing his efforts for peace, proposed to all theinterested powers an immediate suspension of hostilities and the im-mediate convocation of a conference between the great powers, in whichPoland would also participate . Mussolini's proposals were, without anydelay, accepted by all governments concerned except Great Britain .'

Mussolini had asked for the possible-a suspension of hostilities, andthe stopping of marching armies . As a matter of fact, German troopswere twenty miles deep into Polish territory, and Polish troops hadcrossed in various places the frontiers of East Prussia . British inventive-ness was not, however, at a loss ; it found very quickly the impossiblething to ask in order to frustrate 11 Duce's pacifying attempt . The Brit-ish Government demanded that German troops be withdrawn to Ger-man territory before it would accept Mussolini's proposal and startnegotiations ."'The French Government and other foreign governments were the recipients yes-

terday of an Italian proposition tending to secure a settlement of the present Europeandifficulties . After deliberation, the French Government has given a positive answer ."(Information of the Havas Agency, September 1, 1939 .)The positive answer given by Georges Bonnet, the French Foreign Minister, was

accompanied by the following commentaries (French Yellow Book, piece number 327) :"It is the opinion of the French Government that such a conference must not limititself to partial and provisory solutions-to limited and immediate problems . It shouldevoke all problems of a general character and reach a general appeasement that wouldpermit the urgent and firm reestablishment of a durable peace ." Adds Mr. Bonnet inhis Defense de la Paix : "We should have proposed, therefore, a broader Munich andtransformed it into a general conference of all interested powers : the United States,the USSR, Poland, and the Balkan States included ." How different would have beenthe history of the world if Great Britain had joined France in accepting Mussolini'sproposal .

145

146 / The Suicide of Europe

London asked Daladier to cancel France's former consent, and Dala-dier, the "captive chief," as de Monzie called him-yielded to London'sinjunctions. We quote from Mr. de Monzie's Ci-Devant :

September 3, Bonnet [the French Foreign Minister] told the cabinet ofLondon's insistence on an immediate ultimatum . When leaving the councilI urged Bonnet not to take any heed of the British non possumus. To de-mand the withdrawal of the German troops was an indefensible pretension .[Italics added.] 2

Of the position of Daladier, the captive of the hidden powers, and ofPaul Reynaud, their principal representative in the French Cabinet,Mr. de Monzie gives the following memorable information :

Paul Reynaud is back from London, where he participated in the Su-preme Council meetings . He has operated alone, he has negotiated alone,and he has pledged France not to negotiate a separate peace . I found Dala-dier in his office at Rue Saint Dominique totally prostrated, disheartened .He told me : "He [Reynaud] has consented to everything they wanted-everything that I did not want . Monzie, I am terrified when I think ofwhat such a man can do to our country!" [Italics added .]

Daladier was the Prime Minister . Who empowered Reynaud to decidethe fate of France?

But another opportunity was opened to Poland-an opportunity thathas not been mentioned, to date, to my knowledge, by any modernhistorian or by any commentator. That opportunity was lost to theheroic and betrayed country-again because of British promises, pres-sures, and threats. I am referring to Goring's speech a few days beforethe invasion of Soviet Russia's troops into Polish territory .I had been informed by the German Minister in Copenhagen, Herr

Renthe-Fink, of the genesis of this important manifestation . Goring hadalways had a special sympathy for Poland ; he had always consideredher as Germany's probable ally in a war against Soviet Russia . He hadseen with sadness and disapproval the beginning of the hostilities, andhad insistently asked the Fiihrer to permit him to try a last attempt atconciliation. Hitler gave his consent and approved the text of Goring'sspeech, the significance of which was unmistakable . More than that,Hitler backed it openly by his demonstration of deference and admira-tion at Pilsudski's grave .

I was so convinced at that moment that a surprise opportunityfor an arrangement between Germany and Poland, spoiled by Great

2 Bonnet, the French Foreign Minister, and Daladier, the French Prime Minister,did not want war; neither did France . Paul Reynaud wanted it . On the French sidehe is principally responsible for the catastrophe into which his country and Europewere wantonly precipitated in September 1939.

Danger of Peace-Massacre of the Legionaries / 147

Britain on the diplomatic field, could be found on the battlefields beforethe imminent invasion of Poland by the Soviets, that I wired our Min-ister of Foreign Affairs, asking his authorization to come to Bucharestfor forty-eight hours . The authorization was refused and I had to con-tent myself with a telegram trying to explain the new situation createdby Goring's speech, and suggesting that Poland be advised to suspend defacto her hostilities on the Western Front and concentrate all her forcesagainst the impending Soviet aggression .

I still believe that Germany, which at no time was bound by anyobligation of mutual assistance to Soviet Russia, would have consideredfavorably, from the position gained in the Corridor and Danzig, thissuggested new turn in the military and the political situation . Polandwould have outlived thereby the lunatic behavior of President IgnacyMokcicki and Marshal ~migly-Rydz, and Rumania would have been givenan opportunity to honor her obligations to Poland, defending with allher strength the sector assigned to her in the fight against the commonenemy .

President MoAcicki during his trip through Bucharest, after Poland'sdefeat, was asked by a high Rumanian prelate why he had again thrustaside the hand extended by Germany. He answered that his Governmenthad considered very seriously the advisability of acting upon Goring'ssuggestions, but that it was prevented from doing so by British militaryand diplomatic representatives, who were backed by their Americancolleagues . A prompt forcing of the Scandinavian straits by a Britisharmada and a landing, somewhere on Polish or East Prussian territory,of French and British troops was promised . A few months later I heardexactly the same tale from another Polish authority .

My suggestion for a Polish-German settlement received a completelyindifferent reception in Bucharest, which was hardly surprising sincethey completely contradicted the intentions and the hopes of the threepersonalities who were at that moment handling Rumania's foreign pol-icy: King Carol, Prime Minister Armand Calinescu, and Minister ofForeign Affairs Grigore Gafencu . At no moment had these three person-alities given up hope for new circumstances that would permit them totake part in the fight not only as allies of Great Britain and France, butalso, conforming with the Barthou-Titulescu-Bene"s plan, as allies ofSoviet Russia. Armand Calinescu, the most fanatic pro-Westerner of thethree, pleaded earnestly for an immediate declaration of war on Ger-many .

Without asking for any further authorization, I went to Berlin fora few days in order to benefit from the information and impressions ofRadu Crutzescu, our Minister there, who was more in harmony than Iwith our Government's policy . According to Mr. Crutzescu's information,

148 / The Suicide of Europe

Hitler was deeply impressed by the losses suffered by the gallant PolishArmy, which was fighting with cavalry regiments against his tanks andhis bombers. Mr. Crutzescu did not think there would be any alterationin the policy of waiting, adopted by our Government, as long as war inthe West continued to be what it was: troops guarding, with armsstacked, their frontiers . My telegram, therefore, could have held nointerest for our Government. Crutzescu himself did not accord any greatimportance to Goring's speech or to Hitler's demonstrations beforePilsudski's grave .

I was in the office of Edvard Munch, the Danish Foreign Minister afew days after my return from Berlin when a secretary brought himsome papers he had probably perused already . He delicately extricatedone of them and, pointing to it, informed me to my great astonishmentthat Rumanian Prime Minister Armand Calinescu had been shot by agroup of Legionaries. What had happened, I learned later, was that ahorsedriven carrige had stopped Calinescu's auto at a crossroads andthat nine young men had killed him . The nine Legionaries seized theradio station for a few minutes, announced that Codreanu had beenavenged, and gave themselves up at the next police precinct . They wereimmediately executed at the spot where Calinescu had fallen .

As I could not help muttering something about the numbers of Legion-aries, men and women, Calinescu had himself assassinated, Munch verycalmly retorted : "Well, maybe ; anyhow, please transmit our condolencesto your Government." Rather torn between the total contempt I hadfor the murdered man and the traditional obligation to transmit tomy Government condolences of the legation and the Rumanian colony,I took my clue from Mr. Munch and wired as follows to our ForeignMinister: "Munch, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, has asked me totransmit his and his Government's condolences for the amazing murderof the prime minister ." I learned later that the word "amazing" (grozav)had received contradictory interpretations among the young people atthe cipher department .

I went to bed that night greatly worried by the probable consequencesof Calinescu's execution, all the more so because my wife and my sonwere at that time in Bucharest exposed to all the iniquities of whichCarol and his men were capable . The news next day was more horrify-ing than anything I could have imagined . Mr . Prost, following theformula adopted by almost all the Western commentators, concerningthe slaughter which followed Calinescu's death-when they care to men-tion it-speaks vaguely of two or three Legionaries executed in each"province." This misleading information is all the more disgracefulsince Mr. Prost had lived in Rumania for twenty years, and had had no

Danger o f Peace-Massacre o f the Legionaries / 149

doubt many opportunities to see the almost two hundred crosses in thePredeal cemetery that marked the tombs of a few of the murdered Le-gionaries.

In every county seat, in every town, and in every prison, followingCarol's orders, more than four hundred young Rumanians were killed,sometimes in the most barbaric ways. Some of them were thrown aliveinto crematoriums; young Eleanora Bagdad was taken from her hospitalbed while convalescing from a long illness ; Professor Ionic! escapedexecution once when, gravely wounded, he hid under the corpses of hisfellow victims. He was caught later and finally executed. The bodiesof those murdered were left for days at the crossroads as in the timesof Genghis Khan . In Bucharest the Royal Counselors were asked tomarch in their absurd uniforms past the corpses of the nine Legionarieswho had avenged their Captain and so many of their comrades . Someof those dignitaries, like Argetoianu, who was promoted to Prime Min-ister, even let themselves be photographed during this performance .

All of the Legionaries who had been with Codreanu in the Rimnicprison, including all but one of the former fighters in Spain, were massa.cred in the prison yard. Two brothers of Codreanu were murdered also .The slaughter of the flower of the Rumanian youth was trusted to armycolonels whom Carol had appointed country prefects. Argetoianu, whoreplaced General Argesanu (the head executioner, appointed immedi-ately after Cllinescu's murder) as Prime Minister, announced to thenation and to the world that he would "eradicate even the seeds of theLegionary Movement."

Meanwhile the international press had only words of approbationfor Carol and for his murders . The London Times dedicated a wholelead to the praise of General Argesanu, "a dapper little cavalry gen-eral."

I found it necessary to communicate by telegram to the Governmentin Bucharest my feelings regarding what was going on in Rumania, andalso to inform it of the indignation of all of my colleagues withoutexception, and of every decent person, official or private, with whom Iwas in contact. It was by telegraph also that Argetoianu, our Prime Min-ister, informed me I was dismissed .Together with my telegram to the Government, I sent a series of let-

ters to our principal political leaders, trying to show them that theyshared the responsibility of Carol and his executioners by not protestingagainst all of those atrocities and by not trying to stop them . I receivedonly one answer . It was from Professor lorga, who informed me that"in such circumstances it was unavoidable that some innocents alsohad to pay for the culprits ."

CHAPTER

XVIII

The Panicky Tyrant

The pages of glory written by our soldiers, during WorldWar II, on their victorious march to the Don, the Volga, and the Cauca-sus were preceded and followed by two of the most disgraceful and un-happy chapters of Rumanian history : the reign of Carol II, and theshort reign of Michael, the legatee of his father's sins .

There were ruthless rulers in the history of Moldavia and Walachia,the two Rumanian principalities. But Stefan the Great, Vlad the Impa-ler, Ion the Implacable, and Stefan Lapusneanu were as merciless and asfearless with the enemies of their country as with the rebellious boyardsat home. We forgive the cruelty of Vlad the Impaler and the fits ofpassion of Stefan the Great because, without their harshness, our countrywould have been long ago blotted off the map of Europe by some foreigninvaders .

Carol, oppressor and murderer, corrupt to the bone, usurped all thepowers of the State not in order better to defend it in its hour of need,but in order better to satisfy his avidity and gratify his lust . The manwho had murdered without justice, without pity, and without reasonhundreds of young Rumanians because they kept up the fight againsttreason and corruption, stripped himself, in a panic, of all of his author-ity, of all of his legally and illegally acquired prerogatives, when thehour of danger and decision was upon him and his country . He droppedall of his responsibilities upon those whom he had transformed fromstatesmen and military chiefs into servants ; and he even tried to hidehimself behind the Legionary Movement, which was prepared to acceptall responsibility during this frightful situation but was not prepared toaccept just a fragment of it .

After turning over my responsibilities to Alexandru Duiliu Zamfirescu,my successor in Copenhagen, I divided my time the following months

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The Panicky Tyrant / 151between the Danish capital and Berlin . In Berlin, along with the groupof Legionaries who lived there, we watched, powerless, Carol's policyof simulation and subterfuge, a policy that we felt certain was leadingRumania toward dismemberment and perhaps disappearance .

In February 1940 the last Balkan conference ended with our ForeignMinister's attempt to convince Mussolini to take the lead in a league ofneutrals . This was a senseless renewal of Mr. Gafencu's attempt ofApril 1939 to attract Il Duce into the camp of Germany's enemy, twodiplomatic errors that could be explained only by a total ignorance of therelations that had existed for years between Germany and Italy . Our eco-nomic agreement with Germany, which for a time had been correctlycarried out by our authorities, was again sabotaged by them . We hadexact information concerning the activity of the agents of the WesternPowers in our country, and concerning the participation of our author-ities, military and civilian, in certain projects of military and economicsabotage that would gravely imperil the position of Germany, in caseof war with Soviet Russia. As Mr. Prost seems especially well informedabout those projects, we will quote him once more :

The Rumanian authorities do not reject the German demand . . . butthey examine them with a carelessness that is a way of defense . The nego-tiations are indefinitely prolonged . Once an agreement is concluded, thesame evasions interfere with their execution .There stops the Rumanian resistance . If some oil-carrying convoys are

prevented from passing through the borders, if barges loaded with cementtry to enter the Iron Gate channel, so prone to sabotage, it is not Ruma-nians who are in charge .'

No real Rumanian was in charge indeed ; only the King and hisGovernment, who, deaf to the interests of their country, and with thecooperation of British, French, and American technicians, were prepar-ing the blocking of the Danube and the wrecking of our oil production,both of which were indispensable to Germany's military program, espe-cially in the event of a war with Soviet Russia .Things started to change in Bucharest only after Hitler's blitzkrieg

in Norway, which preceded by twenty-four hours the landing of thetroops that France and Great Britain had been preparing since January14, 1940 .

From then until the end of the German campaign in France, everynew success of the German Army was marked by an attempt on Carol'spart to convince Hitler of his good intentions and of his good behavior .Those attempts did not change Germany's decision concerning theintegrity of our country. Hitler's final decision had already been made

1 Destin de la Roumanie, p. 141 .

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-after Gafencu's visits to Berlin, Rome, and the Western capitals,when, against the earnest advice of the German and Italian Govern-ments, Rumania asked and accepted Western guarantees limited to ourwestern borders, guarantees which placed us directly on the French-British side of the barricade . Only a complete and radical change ofleadership in Bucharest, a change to leaders of daring and unmitigatedpatriotism who had kept their eyes open to our eastern frontiers andto Soviet Russia's intentions, could perhaps have changed the courseof events that deprived Rumania of four provinces .

In Berlin I succeeded in establishing more or less clandestine contactswith our Military Attache, Colonel Vorobchievici, contacts of whichthe Colonel's superiors would, very probably, not have approved . To-ward the middle of May 1940, the Colonel informed me that at the Ger-man General Staff headquarters his attention had been drawn to impor-tant movements of Soviet troops at our eastern borders, movements thatcould have only one significance . The German officers were surprised bythe fact that Rumania had taken no steps to confront this obviousmenace. Colonel Vorobchievici understood that the German GeneralStaff would have liked to have us take such measures as promptly aspossible.

It could be argued today that the attitude of the German militarywas in contradiction to the secret part of the Ribbentrop-Molotov Agree-ment relating to the occupation of Bessarabia by Soviet troops . Eventshave shown, however, and every informed person knew, that this agree-ment was only a transitory formula and that the war would not endwith German and Russian troops in the same camp . The occupation ofFinland after an exhausting war was nothing but a prelude to the futurehostilities between Russia and Germany . The same thing could havebeen said of the occupation by the Soviets of Rumania's eastern prov-inces. It was therefore quite natural for the German Generals, from astrictly military point of view, to want the Soviet armies to be met inBessarabia with at least as stubborn a resistance as in Finland, from anarmy four times as numerous. That this was indeed what the Germanmilitary wanted was later confirmed to me by two German militaryauthorities .

Moreover, it is my conviction that had fighting broken out betweenRumania and Soviet Russia before June 1941 the Germans would havebeen forced to back our resistance-despite the German Government'sintention to choose, if possible, the moment of the outbreak of war inthe east-as they could not have permitted the Soviets either to ap-proach nearer our oil fields or to seize the Danube delta. Those of myreaders who have the patience to follow these memoirs through thenext chapters will see that it was this conviction of mine that caused

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the only serious political divergence of opinion between General Anton-escu and myself during the few months I was Minister of Foreign Affairsin his Cabinet. In any case, Germany could not have failed to help usdefend the Carpathian passes and the strategic Namoloasa-Galati line offortifications, which covered the oil-fields, Bucharest, and the Danube .

Colonel Vorobchievici immediately referred to Bucharest the informa-tion and warnings he had received . Those warnings were repeated by hisGerman comrades some days later; and the Colonel, seeing that his pre-vious report had not been taken seriously enough by his chiefs, left forBucharest in order to inform them verbally . Neither at our General Staffnor at our Foreign Office did he find anyone interested in the seriouspiece of news he was bringing. At the Foreign Office, incensed by Ga-fencu's attitude, Vorobchievici asked to be relieved of his responsibilitiesas Military Attach6. Gafencu answered him, smiling: "Colonel, you arean alarmist ."

Colonel Vorobchievici's contacts in the German General Staff werenot mistaken . On June 26, 1940, our Minister in Moscow, GheorgheDavidescu, was summoned to the Soviet Foreign Office and presentedwith an ultimatum, to the Rumanian Government, demanding thebeginning of the evacuation within forty-eight hours not only of Bes-sarabia but also of a part of Bucovina, a province over which neitherCzarist nor Soviet Russia had ever had any pretention .

Gafencu had unexpectedly, but very conveniently, resigned his officeas Foreign Minister a few weeks before the presentation of the Sovietultimatum. When King Carol was told about it, he took two series ofsteps calculated to throw upon others the responsibility for making adecision :

1. He urgently convoked the Envoys of Germany and Italy, the twocountries against which he had conspired for years, and asked themwhether they would advise him to defend Rumania's territory and sov-ereignty . We can imagine the contempt the Envoys must have felt forthis move of the panicking, deflated tyrant. A King who asks his adver-saries' permission to defend his country has obviously already decidednot to defend it. It was perhaps at that moment that Berlin irrevocablydecided that Hungary's friendship had more value than Rumania's . Ger-many had her own program concerning Soviet Russia, and Italy wasfinding in Carol's capitulation a wonderful opportunity for her clientnations, Hungary, and Bulgaria. Therefore, Carol received the answerhe was expecting: he was advised to evacuate and comply .

2. He convoked a Crown Council, which was attended by some ofthose generals who a few months earlier, during a royal visit to Bessara-bia, proclaimed him the most powerful King alive, and by that sorryflock of politicians who were active or passive accomplices of his plun-

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ders and his atrocities . Without any hesitation or shame, Carol, givingup all the power legally his, as King and Commander-in-Chief of theArmy, and all the power he had usurped at the price of so much Ruma-nian blood, meekly asked those present if they believed that Rumaniawas sufficiently prepared to resist the Soviet invasion . Carol knew theanswer better than anyone else ; among his usurpations was the royalmonopoly over all armament contracts with foreign and national com-panies.

But even the state of quasi-disarmament in which the RumanianArmy had been abandoned did not justify the order he gave the sameday, to evacuate without resistance the two provinces claimed by theKremlin, and to abandon 3,500,000 Rumanians to their tragic fate . HadRumania fought, it would not have been the first time that Rumaniansoldiers had been expected to use outdated and insufficient weapons .They had done it before and were prepared to do it again if they hadbeen ordered to do so .

There was no obligation for Carol to follow the cowardly advice ofhis cowardly advisers . If he had wanted to fight, he could have foundstatesmen, generals, and colonels other than those he had used for im-prisoning and butchering the most gallant among the Rumanian fight-ers. His well-known lack of personal courage was also no excuse forhanding over Rumanians and Rumanian territory to the cruelest ofenemies. The day had passed when a king was expected to appear onthe battlefields, and, besides, an airplane would always have been at hisdisposal.

The explanation of Carol's behavior in July 1940 must be sought else-where .

Many have misinterpreted Titulescu's firing by Carol . At no momentwas Titulescu's foreign policy abandoned until Carol's expulsion by theLegionary Movement. In some manner it was continued even duringthe National Legionary Government in the form of the intrigues thatprovoked the schism between General Antonescu and his LegionaryMinisters, and later in the clandestine relations maintained with theenemy by Antonescu's new collaborators . King Michael applied it infull force when he handed over Marshal Antonescu and his country tothe Communists and when he accepted from the hands of Marshal Tol-bukhin the Order of Victory .The cardinal purpose of this foreign policy had always been that in

the event of a new European conflict, Rumania must end up in thesame camp as Soviet Russia . Not even the most stupid Rumanian states-man could have believed that in the event of such a collaboration, avictorious war could have ended with Bessarabia still a Rumanian prov-ince. The sacrifice of this half of Moldavia had been foreseen and ad-

The Panicky Tyrant / 155

mitted by Titulescu ever since his intervention in the Riga negotiationsand the drawing up of the Rumanian-Russian railway treaty . This sac-rifice was also admitted by those who were ready in 1936 to put ourrailways and our highways at the service of the Russian High Command,and by those who solicited and accepted the Franco-British guarantees,knowing that they did not include our eastern borders .

The Western chancelleries, who during the first years of the war neverlost their contacts with the Kremlin, knew very well the inevitability ofan armed conflict between Germany and Russia. For them, and for theirfriends in Bucharest, the part that Rumania was to play in case of sucha sudden change in the military and political situation was decided inadvance. Therefore, the sooner a solution could be found to the questionof Bessarabia-the only serious obstacle, it was thought, to Rumanian-Russian military collaboration-the better for everybody . The easiestsolution was evidently the occupation of Bessarabia by Soviet troops .

After the Russian ultimatum the idea of military collaboration withthe Soviets was still alive among those factors in Bucharest responsiblefor this fiasco . Let us go back, for a moment, to the "alarmist" interven-tion of Colonel Vorobchievici, and to the indifference with which it wasreceived by Gafencu. And let us consider the following dates : 1 . Towardthe end of May 1940 information about Soviet concentration of troopsat our eastern borders reached our Government . 2. On June 1, 1940,Gafencu resigned unexpectedly after eighteen months of activity . 3. OnJune 26, 1940, his successor received the Soviet ultimatum . 4 . On July27, Gafencu was appointed Rumanian Minister to Moscow, an appoint-ment that would not have been possible, even with a minimum amountof decency, if he had been the Foreign Minister who had received theultimatum .

Two other facts also have to be taken into account : 1. At the momentin 1941 when our troops started to reconquer Bessarabia, Carol, whowas then in exile in Mexico, hastened to inform the Russian Ambassa-dor, with whom he enjoyed most friendly relations, that he disapprovedof this Rumanian initiative . 2 . In the memorandum presented byGafencu, to the Paris conference in 1946, a memorandum that was sup-posed to enumerate all the losses suffered by Rumania and all her reven-dications, Bessarabia and Bucovina were not even mentioned?Mr. Prost explains that the sending of Gafencu to Moscow was sup-

posed to coax the Soviets . It is true that the Soviets could only havebeen pleased by the appointment of Gafencu, the most fervent advocate

2Gafencu had no official standing at the time . He did not represent the CommunistGovernment in Bucharest which was then the official party . Together with Messrs.Visoianu and Niculescu-Buzesti, also former Foreign Ministers and the organizers ofRumania's capitulation under King Michael, Gafencu pretended to represent the realinterests of Rumania before the Paris Conference .

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of resuming diplomatic relations with the Kremlin, and the most friendlyguest and host of the Soviet envoys in Bucharest. But was this the mo-ment to attempt any coaxing of the Kremlin bandits? Gafencu had notbeen sent to Moscow by King Carol in order to obtain the restitution ofthe lost provinces; he was sent there in order to prepare the Rumanian-Soviet military alliance that was finally achieved by King Michael andthe spiritual heirs of Titulescu who surrounded and still surround him .

CHAPTER

XIX

The Arbitration of Vienna andthe Legionary Movement

Among the thousands of Legionaries arrested after Calinescu'smurder was my son Elie-Vlad. As Carol's mercenaries entered our home,Elie-Vlad, after jumping through a rear window, passed under their nosesin full military garb without being recognized. Kurt, the Danish chauf-feur, took his muftis to him at the Swedish Legation, where old friendsof ours hid him for a while and helped him plan his escape . He had noluck, however, and was caught when trying to cross the Hungarian fron-tier on his way toward Budapest, where his grandmother was expectinghim with Kurt and the Chrysler, en route for Copenhagen .

He spent eight months in Carol's prisons . When after two months mywife was finally allowed to visit him, she found that his feet were in sucha state from the bastinado, the standard treatment applied to Legionar-ies, that he was scarcely able to walk . My wife told me later that when,thanks to a tip of 100,000 lei, she could send him some clean under-wear, the old set they gave her was stained with the blood of the torturesto which he had been submitted . My wife received the customary visitfrom a delegate of the murder syndicate, Marinescu-Moruzov, to whichshe had to pay 3,000,000 lei ($30,000) for the promise, for whatever it wasworth, that our son's life would be spared .

A few days before being confined herself to house arrest, under whichmy wife spent three months, she went to see, among other foreign en-voys, Herr Fabricius, the German Minister, to ask him to try and stopthe atrocities that were defiling the country . Herr Fabricius replied verycalmly : "You exaggerate, my dear lady, you exaggerate ."

Later, I was deeply distressed when I saw my mother-in-law arrivealone from Budapest, where I knew she had been expecting my son . Myworries were not quieted by the news she brought with her . My anxiety

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for my son and my wife did not end until a few months later when,after the rape of Bessarabia, Carol, knowing that further mutilationswere in store for his country, tried to "pass the buck," or at least a partof it, to the Legionary Movement, offering it an "understanding" andliberating the imprisoned Legionaries . Until then, the only direct newsI had received from Elie-Vlad were a few words written on the tornpage of a book that he had succeeded in smuggling past the prison'sgates : "Dear Father, if I have to meet the Grim Reaper, which mighthappen at any moment, you may be sure that I will confront him withthe impassibility I owe to the name I bear ."

My first reaction to the news of the unexpected truce between theMovement and its enemies was that of great relief. For the moment atleast, it meant the end of the menace hovering over the heads of somany Legionaries, my son among them . But I did not get an explanationof the decision taken by the Movement's leadership in Bucharest untilI took another trip to Berlin, where I was fully informed by my friends .Horia Sima, one of them, had smuggled himself back into Rumania,

and by general consent had taken the lead in the Movement's activities .After many vicissitudes he was discovered and arrested. Had this hap-pened a few months earlier, he would have been shot immediately . Butin that summer of 1940, after the German victories and the rape ofBessarabia, a great fear had already entered the vitals of Carol and ofhis men. So when a group of friends of the Movement observed to acertain General Bengliu, one of Carol's chief stooges, that the time hadcome for less simple measures than a bullet in the neck, Sima was liber-ated and a few days later brought to the palace with some of the prin-cipal Legionary leaders in Bucharest .Carol assured them immediately that his foreign policy was now per-

fectly in agreement with the views of the Movement and asked them toparticipate in the formation of a new government . Sima's answer toCarol was, in substance, as follows : Carol could organize his own policeforce and take all the precautions he felt necessary for his personalsafety; but only a Legionary Government could assure Rumania of therespect due to an independent country firmly determined to defend itselfto the end against any aggression . Carol, who could not by nature be-lieve anybody's sincerity, dodged this proposal and offered the Movementsome secondary responsibilities and freedom of the press . Horia Simaand his friends reflected long and deeply ; the decision they made sprangfrom only one motive, the country's welfare .

The loss of Bessarabia had left Rumania crushed with grief at thespectacle of the suffering of the inhabitants, whose mass abductions andmass executions had begun already, Soviet fashion . But there was alsothe anxiety of the menace of other dismemberments . The storm was

Corneliu Codreanu .

Headquarters of the Legionary Movement, Casa Verde, built by the Legionaries .

The Legionary squad, photographed just before its departure to fight in Spain . In themiddle, a Legionary priest who fought as an ordinary soldier in the Spanish Civil War .

General Prince George Cantacuzene, Rumanian hero of WorldWar I and right arm of Codreanu .

Ion I . Mqa, second highest personality in the Legionary Movement .

Bucharest : The funeral)f the Legionaries whofell in Spain . (Right andbelow.)

Legionaries killed andthrown in the streetsduring the huge massa-cre of September 22,1939. Note the orderlyattendance and, behindthe lines of police, thesilent crowd .

Horia Sima, Codreanu's successor as head of the Legionary Movement .

Bucharest, the day of theproclamation of the Na-tional Legionary Gov-ernment .

Ceremonies when Anto-nescu joined the Legion-iry Movement .

The burial of CorneliuCodreanu .

Ion Antonescu, Adolf Hitler, Paul Schmidt, and the author .

The author, seated center, in Bulgaria with Legionary comrades .

M

The Arbitration of Vienna and the Legionary Movement / 159roaring on all our borders . Two other neighbors were lusting after ourbadly defended territories . The Italian press, in articles whose inspira-tion was easy to identify, was openly asking for new transfers of Ruma-nian soil to Hungary and Bulgaria . The final decision belonged, how-ever, to Berlin . The Legionary Movement, which had not yet realizedthe incapacity of the German leaders to recognize and evaluate the spir-itual, moral and material forces in any people other than their own,had reason to believe that a new Government composed of members ofthe Movement would have some weight in Berlin regarding Germany'sdecision to refuse or to accept Italy's suggestion . Trying, therefore, toefface from their memory all recollections of the mass murders, mass tor-tures, and mass imprisonments of which they had been the victims, theLegionaries accepted Carol's offer to participate in the formation of anew Government, but with one condition : his promise that not an acreof Rumanian soil would be yielded from then on without a fight .

The Movement firmly decided not to permit Carol to go back on hisword. That is why Horia Sima, on seeing that there were neither signsof a change of attitude among the members of the Cabinet he had con-sented to join, nor any military preparations to cope with the newthreats, briskly resigned on August 8 from a Government in which hehad spent only a few days .

There was no dearth of ominous signs for the Rumanian people . Afterthe visit of Count Pal Teleki and Istvan Csaky, the Hungarian PrimeMinister and Minister of Foreign Affairs, respectively, the BulgarianPrime Minister had also been received by Hitler . The German pressrelished in the publication of a complete list, by first and second name,of the foreign agents who were busy in Rumania with various projectsof military sabotage . This press had a good laugh when our Prime Min-ister, Gigurtu, and our Minister of Foreign Affairs, Manoilescu, an-nounced the withdrawal of Rumania from the League of Nations, whoseexistence at that time had been forgotten by everybody . Nobody in Ru-mania doubted that the country was again on the eve of a grave decision ;but nowhere except in the Legionary Movement did one observe a de-termination to face the decisive moment with the fortitude of those whoare prepared to fight, impossible though victory might seem . The Move-ment decided, therefore, that Carol had to go .Only those who have been continuously mistaken or misinformed

about the nature of the relations between the Movement and the Ger-man Government could have wondered at the fact that all during thisperiod, and even at the moment of Carol's overthrow by the Legionaries,Germany had continuously backed Carol and not the Movement . Forthe well informed, there had been only two incidences of real collabora-tion between the Movement and the Germans : The time the German

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Government put its system of transportation at the disposal of the Le-gionary Movement for the transfer to Rumania of those killed in Spain ;and the time, nine years later during the last months of the war, whenHitler and Ribbentrop asked the Movement's leaders, those in Germanconcentration camps and those who were free, if they were prepared toraise again the flag that King Michael and his advisers had hurriedlyhurled away.

The true intentions of Carol and his ministers had never escaped Hit-ler. He was finding, however, in the very duplicity of their attitude anelement of debility that permitted him to secure all the raw materialRumania could offer him. The feelings of the Fiihrer towards Carol andhis emasculated Government can be understood . What cannot be under-stood, and what was one of the imponderables that brought the ruin ofthe Germans, was and is the arbitration of Vienna, by which the Germanand Italian arbiters, Herr Ribbentrop and Count Ciano, tore away an-other part of Rumania, almost half of Transylvania, and gave it to Hun-gary. Hitler, yielding to Mussolini's and Ciano's pressures, was maimingmaterially and morally the country that would be his only serious allyin the war against Soviet Russia, the only war he really wanted .

After my dismissal, I had kept very friendly relations and continuouscontacts with my German and Italian colleagues . I had expressed severaltimes to them my amazement at the sympathies their governmentsseemed to entertain toward Carol . They answered with the same argu-ments that were used by the German and Italian representatives inBucharest when advising the Legionary leaders . Carol's departure couldprovoke chaos . We had better, therefore, come to an understanding withhim. It was not difficult to see that the real explanation for Rome's andBerlin's objections to an overthrow of Carol by the Movement was theirconviction that Carol would accept, without resorting to arms, the newsacrifices that the Central Powers were about to ask from Rumania .

In a rather animated discussion with Giuseppe Sapuppo, the ItalianEnvoy, I reiterated my conviction that only Carol's departure could re-store decency, order, and tranquility to Rumania and assure the respectof our frontiers ; I communicated to him at the same time my intentionto return immediately to Bucharest . The next day, when I sent my pass-port to the German Legation, this document was returned to me with avery courteous note that at that time the Legation was not able to grantme the visa, which they had, until then, so often given me . I will addimmediately that my friend Sapuppo confessed later to me that it washis intervention that had provoked this temporary embargo .

The result of the Vienna Arbitration was phoned to me by one of thecounsellors of the German Legation . In my indignation I shouted athim, "With that, you have lost the warl" I did not know that at about

The Arbitration of Vienna and the Legionary Movement / 161the same moment Count Miklos Banfy, the former Minister of ForeignAffairs of Hungary, was telling our Charge d'Affaires in Budapest, DanGeblescu: "This arbitration means the end of our two countries ." CountBanfy's reasoning was very likely identical with mine . The new configu-ration given in Vienna to the Rumanian-Hungarian boundaries, thenew loss of population inflicted on Rumania with the correspondingloss of recruiting material, and more than anything else the cruel andthoughtless blow delivered to Rumania's national pride and the legiti-mate wrath and hate it provoked, could only result in a dangerous dim-inution of our country's value as a natural bulwark against Sovietambitions, which were as dangerous for Rumania as for Hungary, and,in the final analysis, for Germany .'

I was informed the same day that the German Legation was expectingmy passport. In Berlin where I met my wife, who was no longer underhouse arrest, I had a remarkable encounter, the importance of which Igrasped only a few months later, on an official visit to the Reich's capital .

I personally came in contact with the Canaris conspiracy in the firstdays of September 1940. It started, however, in the very first hours of theSecond World War and its consequences are still molding modern his-tory. With the treatment inflicted on the Russian population by theGerman forces and Italy's foolish expedition against Greece, it had beenone of the three principal factors that saved the Communist world fromutter destruction at the hands of the German Army .As mentioned earlier, the international situation had brought me sev-

eral times from Copenhagen to Berlin, where as a free agent I hoped tobe able to establish with the German Government some useful contactsfor my country. I had found every door closed to me . I was rather aston-ished, therefore, when I received the visit of a certain Captain Mullerwho informed me that Admiral Wilhelm Canaris wanted to see me at myearliest convenience .

Admiral Canaris was the head of the Abwehr-Dienst, the intelligenceservice of the Wehrmacht, and one of the less accessible men in Ger-

1 Count Pal Teleki, the Hungarian Prime Minister, was a better European than Rib-bentrop or Ciano . In March 1940 he declared to the latter : "I will do nothing againstRumania, as I do not want to be responsible, even indirectly, for having opened thegates of Europe to Soviet Russia . Nobody would forgive me for that, not even Ger-many." It would not be fair to censure Count Teleki for having accepted, a few monthslater, that half of Transylvania which Ciano and Ribbentrop offered him on a silvertray at Vienna, for meanwhile Carol's Rumania had proved to be a very poor watcherat the gates of Europe . But Teleki's statement to Ciano perhaps explains the Hun-garian Prime Minister's suicide at the moment of the invasion of Yugoslavia, whenHungary was asked to participate, at least by permitting German troops to cross herterritory, in this military operation provoked by Italy's absurd pretensions upon Cro-atia and large Balkan territories . It seems that with a remarkable sagacity Teleki hadforeseen that the unfortunate Balkan expedition would bring the triumph of Commu-nism in Eastern Europe.

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many. The proposed interview was of special interest to me as I had notsolicited it, and I was told that Canaris had recently met some importantRumanian personality . "You will soon be back in Rumania," the Admi-ral told me. "You will very likely be given an important office . For thesake of our common interests, I ask you to promise that you will do yourbest to protect Moruzov's life and liberty ."That was, indeed, the last topic I would have imagined the Admiral

wanted to discuss with me . Moruzov had been one of Carol's chief execu-tioners in the still recent massacre . A former Soviet official who migratedto Rumania in 1919, Moruzov was employed by the Rumanian statepolice, first as a simple informer, then in more important functions .King Carol, to everyone's astonishment, had suddenly appointed himchief of our army's intelligence service, a post corresponding to Canaris'post in Germany .

I reminded the Admiral of the part Moruzov had played in the recentmassacres, and also of his dubious origin . I informed him that some timeago one of Moruzov's chiefs had singled him out to me as a probable dou-ble agent . The Admiral was adamant and insisted with such vehemencethat I finally asked him why he was attributing such importance to Mo-ruzov's welfare. "Because," he told me, "it is through Moruzov that wehave the best information concerning Soviet Russia's military prepara-tions ."

Before leaving Berlin, we again received a visit from Captain Muller,bearer once more of his chief's insistences . We asked him to lunch, andthe conversation that ensued left my wife and me perplexed .Captain Muller informed us that Great Britain had never been and

would never be defeated. He added: "What I am about to tell you, com-ing from a Prussian officer, might perhaps be considered as an act ofhigh treason. Pay attention however. Don't, under any circumstances,take the responsibility, as Minister of Foreign Affairs for your country,of pushing it into a war where you will have Great Britain as an adver-sary. You will be crushed ; Great Britain is always victorious ."

I must confess that at that time I did not attach too great an impor-tance to Muller's statements . I attributed them to the commendable de-sire of an intelligence agent to probe the political beliefs of Rumania'snext Minister of Foreign Affairs; and I answered him accordingly. Mywife thought otherwise . She had a much less favorable, and even an omi-nous, interpretation of Muller's indiscretions, which showed again thegenuineness of a woman's intuition . I had not the faintest idea that Ihad been in contact with the greatest spy ring and traitors known to themilitary history of any country .

When the news reached Bucharest that Carol's delegates in Viennameekly accepted another intolerable mutilation of our territory, a wave

The Arbitration of Vienna and the Legionary Movement / 163

of horror and of indignation swept the country. It was the LegionaryMovement that took the lead in the following rebellion, for which ithad been preparing itself since Sima's resignation from the ephemeralappeasement Cabinet. The general mobilization of the Movement wasordered. It was to the shouts of "Not an acre morel" and "Fight or got"and with posters bearing the same slogans, that thousands of Legionariescame out into the streets and that the Royal Palace, against which afew symbolic warning shots were fired, was besieged . When Carol askedGeneral Coroama, the Commander of the Bucharest Army Corps, if hewas prepared to order the troops to fire against the rioters, the Generalanswered in the negative .

The well-organized movement spread all over the country. In Con-stanta and Brasov several Legionaries were wounded or killed in the en-counters with the army and the state police . The Legionary insurrectionproved uncontrollable, and Carol had to leave in haste with his mis-tress (the latter, the greatest nuisance our country has ever known) andwith a last and not unimportant piece of booty : paintings by mastersthat his granduncle, King Carol I, had donated to the nation .The enemies of the Legionary Movement did not fail to spread, by

commission and omission, an incredibly distorted version of what hap-pened in Bucharest and in Rumania in those first days of September1940. They fabricated a supposed collaboration between the Movementand German authorities, with Carol's expulsion as a common purpose .Somewhat contradictorily, they tried to diminish or deny the part playedby the Movement in this eviction, attributing it principally to GeneralAntonescu's activity .

The truth is that far from helping the Movement in its violent reac-tion to the Vienna Arbitration, the German authorities in Berlin andthe German representative in Bucharest urged the Legionary leaders,until the last moment, to reach an understanding with Carol, of whoseservility they were by then assured. Infiltrieren nicht sturtzen ("Infil-trate, don't overthrow.") was what we heard continuously until the mo-ment Carol, in another panic, packed off again for more restful shores.What the slanderers want to consign to oblivion is the fact that theLegionary Movement, so often accused of being a regional office of Na-tional Socialism, had been the only Rumanian political group to askthat the Vienna Arbitration be resisted with all our armed forces ; whichmeant war not only with Hungary, but also with Germany .It was this same recommendation of conciliation that the leaders of

the Movement received from General Antonescu, until the General un-derstood that the Movement, around which the whole country, militaryand civilians, had gathered, would never countenance his personal ambi-tions as long as he continued to advocate a hybrid solution for this final

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crisis. Without the support of the Movement, Antonescu had no way offorcing Carol to give up part of his royal authority . Antonescu had nosupport in the army, where he was cordially and unanimously detestedunder the nickname Cainele Rosu ("the Red Dog"). His popularity inthe country was nil at best. What was perfectly true, however, was thatthe General had taken very clever advantage of the situation .I saw Herr Ribbentrop before leaving for Bucharest, where Horia

Sima had urgently summoned me . Present at the interview from theGerman side was State Secretary Wilhelm Keppler. I was accompaniedby the Legionary, Victor Vojen .

After the usual preliminaries, the following dialogue took place be-tween the German Foreign Minister and this writer .RIBBENTROP: "I was informed that your Movement intended to

resist, with arms in hand, the Vienna Arbitration . If this is true, I canonly attribute it to the youth of your organization ."STURDZA: "I am glad, Mr . Minister, to be able to dispel your doubts .

I can assure you that if the Legionary Movement had had the decisionto make, the Rumanian Army would have opposed with all its forceboth invasions, that of Bessarabia and that of Transylvania . I can assureyou also that if we should be the Government of tomorrow, no furtherviolation of our frontiers will be permitted without armed resistance .This corresponds I believe with Germany's interest, since in Vienna youguaranteed the inviolability of the territory you left us ."

I had further opportunities to meet Herr Ribbentrop, and he alwaysimpressed me as a dreamer, a dreamer of Germanic dreams, a patriotwho lived, as I am sure he died, with his pensive gaze still on the unat-tainable vision .

PART FOUR

Antonescu,the Insane Leader

Marshal Antonescu was an historical calamity . In thefinal analysis he caused Rumania as much evil as didCarol. He created the climate in which the conspiracyof August 23, 1944, was born and prospered . He al-lowed contacts to be established between irresponsiblepersons and organizations and the enemy, in the ab-surd hope that the country's independence could besaved that way . He allowed himself to be surroundedby people in the service of the adversary, and he gavethem access to the most confidential state affairs andto the management of military operations .

By his lack of reaction to the activities of the en-emy agents he favored defeatism, he weakened theinner resistance of the State, disorganized its institu-tions, and permitted thereby the carrying out of thecoup d'etat of August 23 .

By removing the Legionaries from his Governmentand keeping them in prison until the outbreak of thecatastrophe, he sabotaged the last possible means ofsaving his country .

Finally, he was himself the victim of the politicalsystem he had created . He was devoured by thesharks he had gathered around himself .

Horia SIMACazul Iorga-Madgearu

Nobody tried to help him . Not even his personalguard. The only persons who would have assistedhim in the hour of need, the Legionaries, were inprison, had been sent to the front in special extermi-nation battalions, or were biting their nails in Ger-man concentration camps.As Commander-in-Chief of our fighting forces, no-

body had the right to rebel against him. It was asacred and elementary duty for every citizen after thebeginning of war not to have other preoccupationsthan what was happening at the front, putting offany personal dispute . The man who had declaredwar had all of its historical responsibility, and healone was entitled to decide when and how this warought to end.Raging in our misery, we did not undertake any

action that could have harmed the conduct of themilitary operations . In what concerns the war he wasleading in the East, we were in complete accord withthe Marshal, despite the fact that his political titleswere not quite in order .

We considered the war he was leading like an his-torical necessity and as an integral part of our doc-trine. And we condemn without any qualificationthose who from the positions where they have suc-ceeded to creep, substituted their authority for thatof the Marshal.

Horia SIMACazul Iorga-Madgearu

CHAPTER

XX

A Tortured Man

We have often been asked why we chose Antonescu as PrimeMinister. The answer is that we did not choose him ; we accepted himas the most expedient and, after all, apparently unobjectionable solu-tion to the crisis provoked by Carol's departure .

Carol, before being forced to leave, had delegated the greatest part ofhis constitutional prerogatives to Antonescu . Thanks to the General'smaneuvering ability, he was able to avail himself of the state of panicinto which the Legionary insurrection had thrown the King, and towring from him this delegation of power . In other words, Antonescu'sloot was a clear case of the chestnuts pulled out of the fire .

It had always been the intention of the Movement to put a General atthe head of the first Legionary Government . We would not, very likely,have chosen Antonescu, but on the other hand we had no categoricalobjection to him. We knew that he had been a partisan of Titulescu'sforeign policy, but we attributed it principally to his ingeniousness insuch matters. We knew that he had never been a friend of the Move-ment, but we decided to accept his present declaration of friendship . Ithappened also that the German Government and its representatives inBucharest had come to consider him a safe bet, including in their trusta certain Mihai Antonescu, said to be perhaps a distant relative of theGeneral's and in any case one of the latter's intimate collaborators, whofour years earlier had published a book which supported Titulescu'spolicy and in which he urged "the promptest possible annihilation ofNational Socialist Germany"1 But we knew that General Antonescu wasa man of indisputable personal correctitude as opposed as the Move-ment to the corruption and immorality of Carol's era . We decided there-fore to be completely satisfied with his solemn promises, oral and writ-

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ten, of loyal collaboration with the Movement in both foreign anddomestic policy .

I have often thought of writing a book, a product that would be en-titled Heroes and Scoundrels I Have Known . Antonescu would be themost difficult case to classify . The following three incidences will showhow difficult it was for those who knew him to decide what sort of personhe really was .

We were attending a Cabinet Council. The General had asked for someexpense reductions that were, I thought, not quite in agreement with whatought to have been our attitude toward the Rumanian victims of pastand present Hungarian injustices in Transylvania. Antonescu, red in theface, interrupted me, shouting, "Why life annuities for them? What lifeannuity do I receive for that bullet in my head?" At the end of the meet-ing I told General Pantazi, the Minister of National Defense, that I hadnot known General Antonescu had been a war casualty. "War casualtymy eye!" answered the General . "He fell on his head at a horse show inBrasov." General Antonescu, one of the most blatant liars I have everknown, nevertheless did not lie in such circumstances . He really believedhe had been gravely wounded in imaginary circumstances rather than ina simple riding accident for the former was more in accord with the fig-ure he wanted to establish in the history of his country .

On the day after a Legionary manifestation that ended in loud accla-mations for his person, the General sent his tanks and battalions in asurprise attack against the Movement all over the country and arrestedas many of his Ministers as he could lay his hands on. He had no othermotive for this coup d'etat than his firm intention not to share withCodreanu's Movement, and with Codreanu's memory the glory of a vic-tory on the Russian battlefield, which he believed to be near at hand . Byhis new attacks he threw the country into the agony of new disturbanceson the eve of a fateful war .

Sold by his King to his direst enemies, the Soviets, abandoned by allthose with whom he had surrounded himself after his onslaught againstthe Legionaries who would not have abandoned him even in the last mo-ment of a lost war, Antonescu stands erect and disdainful, facing a firingsquad of foreign riffraff rigged out in Rumanian uniforms . No Ruma-nian soldiers had been found for this business . The General shouts witha loud voice, "Straight to the heart, vermin! It is a Rumanian heart!"After so many years of becalming wrath and cooling indignation, I

believe that justice asks that this be the memory we keep of the betrayedGeneral. Yes, this heart was indeed a Rumanian heart .

General Antonescu was a tortured man, tortured by the well-knownsymptoms of the illness of which he was a victim; tortured by a bound-less ambition and ego, signs of a growing paranoia ; tortured, more than

A Tortured Man / 169

anything else, by his irrational jealousy of Codreanu, a man Antonescusaw as blocking his way to personal glory and fame, a man against whomno intrigues, no breaking of promises, no coup d'etat and certainly noassassination could be of any avail . He never understood that the wordswith which the Legionaries greeted one another and with which theyinsisted on addressing him, "Long live the Legion and the Captain,"were the best guarantee of the Movement's fidelity to his own person .

After Carol's departure, the first problem that the Movement and theGeneral had to discuss was that of the Crown; they came to an under-standing quite easily . Both the Movement and the General believingthat it would not be fair to ask the son to pay for the sins of the father,decided to recognize Michael as King, de jure and de facto . They evenasked the new King to sanction the written agreement that determinedthe conditions of the collaboration between the General and the Move-ment .

I had an interesting experience when I presented myself for the firsttime to the General as his Minister of Foreign Affairs . The reader willrecall, perhaps, my first meeting with Antonescu, which was in my broth-er's house. It was at the height of my fight against Titulescu's policy . Ofthe persons I tried to convince of its undesirability, Dinu Bratianu, thechief of the Liberal Party, and General Antonescu, both future victimsof Communist terror, were those who rejected my arguments with themost vehemence . The General had cut short our discussion with a per-emptory "Never against Francel" forgetting that Soviet Russia, notFrance, was our neighbor and our enemy. I was rather surprised, there-fore, when the General did not give any sign of being aware that we hadalready met . I was even more surprised when he delivered for my benefita lecture against what he called "the romantic policy," the very policyhe had so fervently supported four or five years earlier .

A few days later, I received a reprimand from the General when, at adiplomatic reception, after warmly shaking hands with the Dutch En-voy, I had a longer talk with him in order to thank him for his helpduring my son's attempt to leave the country . That was, the Generaltold me, what he meant by a "romantic policy ." What could the GermanEnvoy, who was also present at the ceremony, think of such a demon-stration of friendship toward the minister of a country that was occupiedby German troops?

A series of quarrels followed between the General and this writer, eachprovoked by the General and, with occasional intermissions of moregracious relations, each more serious than the former . The General, whofor years had been Military Attache in London and could not, therefore,have been totally ignorant of diplomatic lore and manners, had taken toordering me to go to various legations to tell or ask this or that of the

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respective envoys . I never did, of course, but rather I asked the foreignenvoys, as had always and everywhere been the custom, to come and seeme, or I arranged things by phone when it was feasible . "Why didn'tyou go to the airport to receive Herr von Papen?" the General askedme once during a Cabinet Council . I explained to him that it was notfor me to do that, and that Herr Papen had quite correctly paid mea visit. "You did not go," growled the General, "because you are a dirtyboyard." I decided to take it as a compliment in disguise .

For reasons of economy, Antonescu had decided to lower the status ofour embassies to that of legations . I objected that this degradation ofour diplomatic representation abroad, just after having been robbed offour provinces, might give the impression that we had admitted the per-petuity of those spoliations and of the corresponding diminution of ourcountry's political importance, an attitude that I knew contradicted theposition the General had always maintained. I tried also to oppose thesuppression of our Legation in Helsinki, explaining that the position ofour two countries toward Soviet Russia had been, and very likely wouldsoon be again, exactly the same . In both cases the General held to hisoriginal decision. I had the uncanny feeling that Antonescu opposed mysuggestions not because of any lack of merit but because they came fromme.

General Antonescu's attitude toward me, his Minister of Foreign Af-fairs, seems perhaps too personal a thing to deserve so much attention .However, along with a similar attitude toward his Minister of Inte-rior, General Petrovicescu, it was an early indication of Antonescu's hid-den intentions, intentions he had held from the moment he signed thewritten contract with Horia Sima . General Petrovicescu and I, the for-mer in the field of internal security and intelligence, the latter in that offoreign information and activity, represented the first two stumblingblocks in the way of Antonescu's morbid ambitions, the fulfillment ofwhich required the previous destruction of the Legionary Movement .

For the execution of his project the General had in Herr Fabricius,the German Envoy, a most efficient helper . I had had an unpleasant ex-perience with the German Envoy at the time of the funeral of the Le-gionaries who had fallen in Spain . Instead of answering with properdignity, as did his Spanish and Polish colleagues, the reproaches of ourMinister of Foreign Affairs concerning his presence at the religious cere-mony that terminated the Legionary demonstration, Herr Fabricius pre-ferred to hide behind me, pretending that I had invited him officially toattend, which was a total fabrication .There were other experiences concerning Herr Fabricius's behavior

that brought him especially to my attention : there was his attitude ofcomplete indifference concerning Carol's treatment of the Legion and

A Tortured Man / 171his friendly relations with our enemies . The "Egeria" of the GermanLegation was an intimate friend of Madame Lupescu's . Nevertheless,when the German Envoy came to me, almost in tears, complaining thathis position as German Minister was endangered because Horia Sima,the Vice President of the National Legionary Government, had not yetreceived him, I helped to arrange the desired and indispensable inter-view. But I could not help availing myself of this opportunity to remindhim that he had continuously opposed the Movement in its fight againstCarol. Herr Fabricius referred to orders received, and with a franknessfor which I am still grateful, he added, "This way, at least, nobody canpretend that you ousted your King and came to power with foreignhelp."

The Vice President received Herr Fabricius, and great was his mistakeand mine. The departure of the German Minister at that moment wouldnot have had any important consequences . His recall a few months later,however, started the series of events that brought the final break betweenthe General and ourselves ; and his intrigues up to his last moment inBucharest helped considerably to make it impossible to repair later thisseparation .

Between the General and his Minister of Foreign Affairs there had beenonly one serious divergence of opinion concerning questions of a politicalcharacter. This difference of opinion was born of our different reactionsto the Vienna Arbitration .The General's response was of a purely oratorical nature . Quite right-

fully, and with an impressive eloquence, he availed himself of everyopportunity to blast against that unfortunate piece of political imbecil-ity, disastrous for every party concerned, Hungary included . I was of theopinion that those very justified condemnations did not take advantageof what the Vienna Arbitration offered to us as maneuvering possibili-ties. There was an important part of the Vienna text of which we couldtry to make use : This was the guarantee of our frontiers, by Germany, asthey existed after the rape of Bessarabia and Bucovina and after theVienna Arbitration .This guarantee had not been given by Germany just to please us; it

protected vital German interests. The occupation of Bessarabia by theSoviets before the time stipulated in the Ribbentrop-Molotov Agreement,and the rape of a part of Bucovina, which had not been foreseen by theGerman Foreign Minister, were more than enough to provoke alarmamong the German military circles and within the party. Germanycould not permit the Soviets to get one step nearer our oil producingprovinces, or to control the Danube by getting hold of the three branchesof the delta .

It has always been my opinion that Germany ought to have started

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her war against Soviet Russia one year earlier, giving up any idea of anoffensive operation in the west. A Western offensive could have had onlyone justification : the prelude to an invasion of Great Britain . Concern-ing the matter of a two-front war, the occupation of France and thegarrisoning of the Atlantic walls deprived Germany of more divisionsthan would have been necessary to defend the Siegfried Line against aFrance that manifestly did not want to start a real fight.

From our point of view, in any case, World War II did not presentany interest other than that of the inevitability of a conflict betweenNational Socialist Germany and Communist Russia . Indeed, unless aGerman-Soviet war ended with a German victory, Rumania's fate, assubsequent events have demonstrated, could only be that of being thefourth European country, after Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, to be en-tirely swallowed by the Communist flood .

It was my conviction, therefore, that after the Vienna Arbitration ourpolicy should have been to try to bring about, as soon as possible, aGerman-Soviet armed conflict by taking advantage of the guaranteethis arbitration had given us . Enough opportunities were offered by thebehavior of the Russian troops at our new frontiers . The Soviet's pre-tension when they presented their ultimatum, went no further souththan the line of mid-current of the northern branch of the Danubedelta, the Kiliya branch . This moderation was, probably, to be attributedto their desire not to provoke too early a German reaction . Nevertheless,since the first days of the National Legionary Government, Soviet troopshad been making continuous incursions on the fluvial islands close toour shores, and sometimes onto those shores themselves. There were, forus, two possible reactions : We could consider those incursions as simplefrontier incidents, or we could consider them as real acts of aggression,answering them with the means, and in the form, corresponding to sucha situation .

We could have created, therefore, a state of war that would haveeventually involved German forces . And this was what I favored. , TheGeneral and Fabricius were of quite a different opinion, and I mustadmit that they both had excellent reasons for that . As a military man,Antonescu was taking into account, first of all, the state of unprepared-ness in which the Carol regime had left our army, and Fabricius couldonly defend the procrastinating program adopted by his Government .

One night, however, instead of limiting themselves to the customaryharassment, the Soviets, after intense artillery bombardment, attackedin battalion force and occupied a large part of Rumanian territory,

I To snatch a morsel of Rumania's territory had become quite a habit with herneighbors. I thought it imperative-quite independently of other considerations-togive warning without delay that those times were over .

A Tortured Man / 173killing or capturing the soldiers at our outposts . General Antonescu wasill, confined to his bed at Predeal, a mountain resort in the Carpathians .The chief of our General Staff, who arrived in the early morning withtwo other Generals, consulted me about the kind of answer I thoughtwe should give the Soviets. I asked them if they had at hand the neces-sary artillery and the necessary troops . At their affirmative answer Iexpressed my astonishment that that piece of Rumanian real estate wasnot already back in our hands .

The army had been deeply shocked and humiliated at being orderedto abandon without a fight first our eastern provinces and then Transyl-vania; therefore, the Generals left the Foreign Ministry exulting at theauthorization they had received from the Foreign Minister himself toget even, if in a small way, with their abhorred neighbors . Things wouldhave followed as they and I would have liked if by ill-luck they had notmet, on their way out of my office, a certain General Steflea, an Anto-nescu crony who later was the first to betray him in his hour of need .Steflea immediately phoned the alarming news to Antonescu, at Predeal .Antonescu ordered our troops to leave the Soviets where they were andscolded me by phone for the initiative I had permitted myself to take .Fabricius came to see me and insisted on the necessity of keeping thingsnice and peaceful at our eastern borders, alluding vaguely to certainnegotiations then taking place .

The Soviets kept their booty, and the German-Russian war startedonly nine months later . But I still keep asking myself what would havehappened if it had broken out in the fall of 1940, before the nonsensicalItalian campaign against Greece, which forced Hitler to send over theDanube more than forty divisions that ought to have been used on theEastern Front, and before Antonescu's coup d'etat against the Legionleft him, in the long run, at the mercy of his enemies .

The sending in 1940 of about three German tank units to Rumaniawas requested by us. Those units, and the accompanying military agree-ment, were the best guarantee we could have against new Soviet attempts .If Germany had sent us four or five divisions instead, we would havefelt still safer. There never was a German occupation of Rumania, asthere never was a British occupation of France . The Little Entente, theBalkan Alliance, the French Alliance, had fallen, as Codreanu had fore-seen, like houses of cards at the first puff of the hurricane . Against theperils of the hour, and against those of the approaching war in the east,our only ally was Germany. German troops were in Rumania as alliedforces against a common enemy-until the moment that the irresponsi-ble Michael, and the fearmongers and recreants who controlled him,joined forces with the enemy.

It was not the fault of the Rumanian people, and still less that of

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the Legionary Movement, that Rumania did not accept Germany's offerfour years earlier, when friendly relations between Germany and Polandwould have permitted the constitution of the only possible concentrationof forces able to defeat Communist Russia without her friends in the westdaring to come to her rescue .

CHAPTER

XXI

Bloodshed in Transylvania,Visit to Rome-The Two Forums

Besides the menace at our eastern borders, we had as a majorworry the brutality with which Hungarian authorities were thrustingtheir domination upon the Rumanian population in the territoriesgranted them by the Vienna Arbitration . Although there was no com-parison between the behavior of those authorities and the evils, theprocess of uprooting and annihilation to which the people of Bessarabiaand Bucovina were submitted by the Soviets, we could not let this mat-ter pass without protesting to those who had guaranteed a fair execu-tion of the Vienna decisions .The arable land that had been distributed by Rumanian agrarian

reform throughout the country, Transylvania included, to all our peas-ants without distinction of national origin (Rumanians, Hungarians,Germans) was taken away by Hungarian authorities from the Rumanianswho had tilled it for more than twenty years and who considered it theirlegitimate property. This, and other vexations, had provoked bloodyincidents . We already knew of several Rumanians killed and woundedwhen the news came of a village in which almost the whole male popu-lation had been massacred by Hungarian soldiers .

It was easy this time to convince the General of the proper procedureto follow. Along with a guarantee of our existing frontier, Berlin andRome guaranteed in the Vienna Arbitration the humane treatment ofthose Rumanians who were under Hungarian administration . In twoalmost identical letters to Herr Ribbentrop and Count Ciano, after de-scribing as accurately as possible the violence and persecution to whichRumanians were submitted, I urged the formation of a German-Italiancommission to check the veracity of my information, to make proper

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remonstrances to Budapest, to stop further atrocities, and to force Buda-pest to indemnify the victims . In order to prevent too long a delay in get-ting the answers, I dispatched Manoilescu, my predecessor at the ForeignOffice, with the letter to Ciano, and Valer Pop, a former Undersecretaryof State, with the one to Ribbentrop . The required members of the com-mission-Minister Roggieri for the Italian Government, Minister Alten-burg for the German Government-were not long in presenting them-selves at my office .

It was decided that they would also visit the part of Transylvaniathat was still in our possession so that they could see how we were treat-ing our minorities . I took care of all of the necessary arrangements fortheir journey . They had to be accompanied by both Rumanian andHungarian officials . Mr. Alexandru Randa, who headed the Rumaniangroup, followed scrupulously the instructions he received : to limit him-self to the geographical and material indications necessary for the in-vestigation, but to avoid any aggravating comments concerning theinvestigated lawlessnesses and, still more, any tirade concerning the in-justice of the Vienna Arbitration . I was of the opinion that this was tooimportant and solemn a subject to allow an opportunity for an incident,and wanted to avoid any verbal, or other, conflicts between the accom-panying Rumanian and Hungarian officials .

The day before they left Bucharest for their tour of inspection, Iinvited the German and Italian delegates to the Ministry, and beforethem and their travel companions, I pointed once more on the map tothe places where violence had occurred and Rumanian blood had beenshed. I described as accurately as I could the nature of the informationwe had received concerning those excesses . At the end of this first part ofthe meeting, Minister Altenburg, whom I was later to meet again inmost tragic circumstances for our two countries, addressed me with thefollowing words: "Although this is not a part of our mission, we wouldlike to have your opinion concerning the way in which you believe theRumanian-Hungarian problem could be solved with both sides suffi-ciently satisfied so that this solution might be considered as final ."

I was prepared for such a turn in our discussions, and with an ethno-graphical map by the famous German geographer Justus Perth be-fore us, it was not difficult to demonstrate that the desired solution wasnot, in any case, that which had been found in Vienna . The new ethno-graphical distribution represented such an injustice for the Rumanianelement that there was no reason to hope that the inner popular pressureand the outer political pressure we were able and determined to main-tain would ease up at any moment in the years to come . On the otherhand the configuration of the new borders made the defense of the

Bloodshed in Transylvania, Visit to Rome / 177

territory given to Hungary an absolutely impossible proposition from amilitary point of view .

As for Herr Altenburg's question concerning the frontiers we wereprepared to accept, I answered that they could not be very differentfrom those the two countries had before the Vienna Arbitration . Wecould not consider changes other than small local rectifications, madeon the basis of strict reciprocity and taking into account the ethniccharacter of the villages involved.

Both Herr Altenburg and Signor Roggieri left me with the impressionthat they were considering their mission with open and impartial minds .Minister Altenburg, before leaving for Berlin, sent me a message throughAlexandru Randa and complimented me on the exactness of the infor-mation I had given him, saying, "Not a corpse less or more than youtold us ." We were not astonished therefore when about a week after theend of the Altenburg-Roggieri investigation, we received from our Envoyin Berlin, Constantin Grecianu, the news that the report of the com-mission was entirely favorable to our position .

But the Altenburg-Roggieri mission was about to end otherwise . Boththe Rumanian and the Hungarian officials who accompanied the foreigninvestigators maintained gentlemenly relations and a dignified attitudeduring the whole trip . But in the Oradea Mare station, at the Rumanian-Hungarian frontier, Mrs . Goga, the wife of the former Prime Minister,appeared in flowing black veils and crepe. Obstinately barring the wayof the two delegates, she delivered a thundering and accusing harangueand did exactly what I had instructed my people not to do, namely,another speech a la Antonescu upon the injustice of the Vienna Arbi-tration . All the efforts of Randa were needed after that to prevent the twoinfuriated delegates from immediately abandoning their mission .

When I referred the result of the investigation to the Cabinet CouncilI could not help mentioning this incident and the unpleasant conse-quences it might have provoked . I learned that it was Antonescu who hadsent Mrs . Goga, one of the Movement's staunchest enemies and a greatfavorite of General and Madame Antonescu, on her oratorical mission .The General provisionally scored a point, however, when, alluding to thegood news Grecianu had sent us, he observed that if the investigationwere to end favorably for us, it would not be because of the way I hadprepared it, but because our grievances were so well grounded .Meanwhile the General and I had received an invitation from the

Italian Government . Before leaving for Rome we had the full officialtext of the final Altenburg-Roggieri report . It was quite different fromthe one that our Minister in Berlin had perused at the Wilhelmstrasse .I congratulated myself for not having tried to deprive the General of

178 / The Suicide of Europe

the small revenge he had taken on me at my mention of the Goga in-cident to the Cabinet Council .

It is said that when, after the occupation of Austria in 1936, whichoccurred without the expected Mussolini opposition, Hitler wired him,"Duce, I will never forget thatl" Mussolini, vigorously striking his desk,exploded, "Christo la Madonna, neither will l!"

If this is not true, it is nevertheless to the point . Mussolini's conductsince then seemed indeed to have been always determined by the fixedidea of never letting Hitler outpoint him at the game of force . It wasthis political incentive that caused him to commit his first major mis-take with his disgraceful, ridiculous and sterile aggression against aFrance that was already defeated. He thereby abandoned, despite Hitler'sexhortations, his policy of non-belligerency, which would have guaran-teed him the position of a pacifier or even of an arbiter among theembattled powers .

We have it from the most authoritative sources that it was this samedesire to "keep up with" the Fiihrer, who had "occupied" Rumania,that influenced Il Duce, again against Hitler's advice, to try to occupyGreece, a fantastic and disastrous decision that, with the treatment ofthe Russian population by German forces and Canaris' treason, wasone of the three principal factors in Germany's defeat and in Commu-nism's victory .

From Count Ciano's diary :

October 8, 1940A telephone call from Il Duce, requesting that we take action in Ru-

mania to elicit a request for Italian troops . He is very angry because onlyGerman forces are present in the Rumanian oil regions . The step is delicateand difficult, but I imagine that Ghigi will carry it through all right .From October 12, 1940

But above all he [Il Duce] is indignant at the German occupation [sic]of RumaniaHitler always favors me with a fait accompli. This timeI am going to pay him back in his own coin . He will find out from thepapers that I have occupied Greece."'

Ghigi, the Italian Envoy in Bucharest, could not carry it through be-cause we did not want any "occupation" troops in our territory . As forthe Italian surprise attack against Greece, it turned into a victorioussurprise counterattack. The Italian troops were saved only by a massiveGerman intervention, which had a fatal effect on Germany's generalstrategy for the war in eastern Europe.

3 Count Galeazzo Ciano, The Ciano Diaries, 1939-1943, Hugh Gibson, ed . (GardenCity, New York, Doubleday & Company, Inc ., 1946), pp. 299, 300.

Bloodshed in Transylvania, Visit to Rome / 179

Our visit in Rome from November 13 to November 17, 1940, coincidednot only with the first debacle of this inglorious expedition, but alsowith the destruction by the RAF of the battleship Cavour, the gloryand pride of the Italian Navy. I did not know whether it was our mutualindignation over the change, under Italian inspiration, of the text ofthe Altenburg-Roggieri report, or the circumstance that the Generalwas removed from the influence of his evil genius Mihai Antonescu andwas surrounded only by Legionaries, but the fact is that our personalrelations had never been warmer than during our trip to Rome . It was,comparatively, a pleasant journey, interrupted only by two incidentsin which I was not directly involved, but so characteristic of the Gen-eral's mentality that I cannot help but record them .

The official of the protocol department of the Italian Foreign Officewho boarded our train in Florence handed us the written program ofour reception in the Rome railway station and informed us that theGeneral and I would both have to detrain from the General's car . TheGeneral insisted that each detrain from his own private car. Protocolconvinced him finally that it would have been difficult for Mussolini andCiano to run from one car to another in order to greet us both with thesame cordiality . An identical scene, with the General's same objections,was repeated at our departure .In Rome we were surrounded by every attention and courtesy ; but

the defeat of the Italian forces in Epirus, the wrecking of the Cavour,our feelings toward the part played by Italy at Vienna, and the informa-tion we had received that it was Ciano who provoked the change in theconclusion of the Altenburg-Roggieri report, explained sufficiently thesomewhat strained atmosphere that surrounded our short stay in Italy'scapital . This tension manifested itself acutely the day after our arrivalat the meeting between Mussolini, the General, Ciano and the writer .

I had already made one blunder that day. I was seated at lunch onMussolini's left ; at his right was King Victor Emmanuel, and furtherright, General Antonescu . Mussolini asked me in a friendly way what Ihad done that morning. I answered that I had spent about two hoursin the Forum . "What forum?" he asked, frowning. "There is more thanone forum." I had forgotten that there was also a Forum Mussolini, ofwhich 11 Duce was particularly proud .

The conversation between us then moved to the military situation . Iadmired the serenity and the characteristic assurance of a man whodeserved companions other than the dubious personalities who stoodbetween him and his gallant and faithful Black Shirts. The battleshipCavour would promptly be refloated ; it was a matter of three months .In the Balkans Italy would conquer . ("It is certain, since we can pit fourdivisions to every Greek division .") Concerning the air fight over Lon-

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don, Mussolini confided : "It is not like this that Great Britain will bedefeated." He did not say more, but it was obvious that what he wouldhave advised was a serious German attempt to occupy the territory ofItaly's principal enemy.

Later, we found Mussolini at his headquarters in the Palazzo Venetiabetween two piles of newspapers, one at his feet, the other on his deskalmost hiding him. General Antonescu, first in a calm manner but withgrowing violence, broached the subject of the altered report, enumer-ating once more Hungarian misdeeds . Suddenly Count Ciano inter-rupted, observing, "Yes, we must admit that the Hungarians have some-times had a tough hand ." This infuriated Antonescu, who, rising fromhis chair, declared, "We will show them what a tough hand isl If theseatrocities don't stop there will be a general massacre of Hungarians inRumania." 2

He calmed down presently, and with a lucidity and a forcefulness ofwhich he was often capable, demonstrated again to our host the enor-mous injustice that had been committed at Vienna. With the originalHungarian map in front of him-the only map used by the arbiters-he pointed out the falsifications committed by the learned and subtlegeographer Count Teleki, the Hungarian Premier . The large mountainregion, sparsely inhabited but inhabited nonetheless by Rumanians, wasmarked by large white patches. The difference between the Rumanianand Hungarian population was not indicated by two strikingly differentcolors such as blue and red, but by two shades of red. Mussolini, his eyeson the map, seemed very interested, but not so Ciano, who was quitelikely as well informed on the subject as was the Hungarian Premier ."And do you think," said General Antonescu, "that such crazy bounda-ries could stand?" Ciano answered, "Not only have we recognized them,we have guaranteed them." "Guarantee or no guarantee, we will breakthem. I guarantee that!" concluded the General .

Between Ciano and this writer the following exchange occurred, with-out the General interrupting me, as was his custom .STURDZA: "You even tried to deprive us of our industrial regions ."CIANO : "That is not true ; we have never had that intention ."STURDZA: "You meant, I suppose, to punish Carol and his clique,

but it is we, who fought the King, whom you stabbed in the back . It is

a The story of an untoward interruption by this writer of General Antonescu's dec-larations to Mussolini and Ciano, told by the General to Herr Fabricius and reportedby Herr Andreas Hillgruber in his book Hitler, Kdnig Carol and Marschall Antonescu,was totally invented by Antonescu, whose imagination knew no limits when circum-stances required such an effort . Antonescu was trying to produce an excuse for hisattitude toward me while we were in Berlin ; the implication was that he was afraid ofbeing interrupted by me again during his presentation to Hitler .

Bloodshed in Transylvania, Visit to Rome / 181

against a Legionary Rumania that you have struck . You will perhapsbe the first to regret it when you have to face your real enemy ."CIANO : "Our real enemy?"STURDZA: "Soviet Russia, of course ."CIANO : "We are not at war with the Soviets."I did not know that Ciano and Mussolini were engaged at that time

in a process of rapprochement with the Kremlin . I quote from Ciano'sDiaries the following observation made in September 1940 : "Mussolinispeaks of our relations with Russia and believes that the moment hascome to take further steps to better them . I agree." On November 28he noted: "One thing is sure, and that is that for many months Germanyhas been supplying arms to the Finns . I did not neglect to find a way ofinforming the Russians of this."An indifference and a lack of vision in such questions of universal

interest as the Communist danger are astonishing traits of the Musso-lini-Ciano policy . It shows how wrong are those who equate all national-ist movements . No comparison can be drawn between the foreign policyof the Legionary Movement, which did not include any idea of conquestor oppression, and that of Fascist Italy, which was based entirely uponconsiderations of prestige, fame, power, and aggrandizement .Despite Ciano's unaccountable animosity toward Rumania and the

Legionary Movement, I had great admiration for his brilliant intelli-gence and personal courage and even sometimes for his politics when,for instance, he concurred with Mussolini in sending Italian divisionsto Spain . 3 We had understood each other very well four years before, atour first meeting ; and I was deeply shocked by his unjust death .4

*

*

s

There are two courts in Rome, and after an audience with KingVictor Emmanuel we went to pay our respects to His Holiness, Pope PiusXII. Conforming to protocol, which considered General Antonescu as

8 1 did not approve, of course, of his brutal, senseless attack against harmless andproud Albania, and still less of the day he deliberately chose for this onslaught, thevery day the Queen of Albania, the beautiful and valiant Geraldine Appony, was ex-pected to be confined . He explains in his diaries that on this day he was sure the royalfamily could not run to the mountains to organize the resistance .

Ciano's execution by his father-in-law was in no way justified . Mussolini wasmuch more responsible than Ciano for the quandary in which Italy had been brought .Ciano was against the sordid aggression against France . He would have kept Italy inthe position of non-belligerency which would have finally made her umpire in thecontest. The attack against Greece was also Mussolini's idea, although Ciano finallyconcurred . Concerning fidelity to their German ally, Mussolini sinned as much as hisson-in-law . Even after his fantastic rescue by Skorzeny, which he owed entirely toHitler's faithfulness to his friends (the German Treue) Mussolini still schemed againstHitler and kept contacts with the enemy .

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head of state, the General was first received alone . I was introduced a fewminutes later, whereupon His Holiness told me abruptly, "We appre-ciated very much the talents and the qualities of Petrescu-Comnen, yourformer envoy ; we regret very much his departure ." I assured His Holi-ness that the person I had chosen to replace Petrescu-Comnen wouldgive him at least the same satisfaction . I asked him to understand that itwould have been very difficult for us to keep as our representative at theVatican a man who had been a member of the Government that hadtolerated the strangling of Corneliu Codreanu . When I said the word"strangling" I could not help but make a corresponding gesture, and HisHoliness recoiled, I am sure, in surprise and horror .

CHAPTER

XXII

Visit to Berlin-Four Are Three

It has been said that no nation knows better than Germanyhow to organize its forces, and none uses them less wisely . There is noreference here to the handling of armies ; the last World War demon-strated once more that few military leaders have ever surpassed theGerman Generals whose skill and imagination were only overcome bythe endless masses of men, sometimes in the proportion of five to one,and of materiel that the Allies were able to throw into the battle. Weare talking to the lack of a certain ultra-strategic and even ultra-politicalfeeling, of an instinct for the possible and the impossible, of an abilityto guess the most hidden reaction in the enemy's mind, of an exactknowledge of the eventual worth of even the most modest among friends .

Into this category must be placed, I believe, the attempt in the fall of1940 to shore up a quadripartite association between Germany, Italy,Japan, and Soviet Russia. Before we left for Rome, Herr Fabriciushad informed me of certain negotiations between Berlin and Moscowconcerning a pact of friendship and mutual assistance between Berlin,Rome, Tokyo, and Moscow. A few days after our return, at a receptionat the German Legation, the German Envoy told me that Molotov wasin Berlin and that a conclusion of the negotiations could be expectedsoon. I could not hide my anxiety . I had understood the necessity of theRibbentrop-Molotov Agreement of 1939-to pull the carpet from underthe feet of the French and British delegates who were then in Moscownegotiating an East-West coalition; but I could not understand thenecessity, at this moment, of tightening political and military bonds thatwere in opposition to what I believed to be Hitler's ultimate intentions .We had paid for the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact with Bessarabia and apart of Bucovina; what would be the price for us of this new under-standing between National Socialist Germany and Communist Russia?

183

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Events have proven that my worries were unfounded . Hitler, as itturned out, preferred to give up his plans rather than permit anotherviolation by the Soviets of our territory and of our sovereignty . Whatwere Hitler's plans, in fact? Herr Fabricius explained them with anoptimism that was also felt, no doubt, by his superiors . The idea was,he told me, to convince Great Britain, by means of an alliance thatcovered two continents from the Pacific to the Atlantic, that the warhad already come to an end. Hitler intended to avail himself of this newsituation by calling again on Great Britain with new proposals of peaceand friendship .

Berlin's optimism was, in my opinion, faulty in two ways : it ignoredthe uncanny perspicacity of Soviet leadership and their limitless intelli-gence sources; and it ignored the nature of the forces that had thrownGreat Britain into a war that was not hers .The Kremlin had no reason for wanting an end to German-British

hostilities; it had every reason for wanting them continued and in-creased; the Soviets knew very well that it was only his fear of a war ontwo fronts that had prevented Hitler from starting a march toward theEast, which was the dream of his life . The interest and purposes ofthose who were then controlling the destiny of the British Empire hadnothing to do with the interests of Great Britain ; they had alreadyknowingly sacrificed the empire the moment they involved it in WorldWar II .

Things did not proceed as smoothly as Hitler and Ribbentrop hadhoped. Molotov, after exhausting every possible pretext to avoid accept-ing Ribbentrop's invitation for a meeting, even going so far as to exhibita medical certificate, demanded such conditions as prerequisites to hissubscribing to any agreement that they obviously could not have beenaccepted. He was therefore able to leave Berlin without any furthercommitment toward the three former members of the anti-Comintern .

Molotov's conditions referred to the recognition of a certain sphere ofinfluence for the Soviets that would have included Rumania and theDanube delta, Bulgaria, and the Dardanelles . Molotov's evasiveness waseasy to anticipate, and the double error of Germany's leaders cost themone year of possible military operations, lost between the hope of win-ning Great Britain's friendship and that of fooling the Soviets over thereal purpose of Germany's redoubtable military establishment.

Along with the news of Molotov's successful evasion, we received theinformation that the four-power pact was instead to be a three-powerpact between Germany, Italy, and Japan . We also learned that CountTeleki and Count Csaky were in Berlin and that they had adhered to thenew instrument. We were invited to do the same .The text of the pact in which we were asked to participate was com-

Visit to Berlin-Four Are Three / 185municated to us before our departure for Berlin . To my great astonish-ment, it seemed to be identical with that described to me by HerrFabricius when Germany still had hopes of seducing the Soviets intosubscribing to it . Therefore, the text did not foresee, and could not haveforeseen, the reciprocal obligation of the three partners in the event of awar with Soviet Russia . It unavoidably implied, on the other hand, Ger-many and Italy's obligations in case of a war between Japan and theUnited States .Such a war would represent grave consequences for us if Germany,

our only protector against the Soviet menace, were involved . The onlywar, the only victory that concerned us, was against the Soviets . Provid-ing the same agreement for those two so different situations seemed tome to be an error of which we might eventually be the victims .

As we traveled from Vienna to Berlin, I imparted my reflections andmy worries to General Antonescu, and suggested that he ask Hitler andRibbentrop, with a measured insistence, that before our adhesion to theagreement an "additional protocol" be signed, secretly if necessary, thatwould establish symmetrical positions and obligations for the threesignatory powers in case of both possible conflicts: war with the SovietUnion, and war with the United States . The advantage represented bythe tripartite pact for Japan was so great that there was ample reasonto think that Japan would have accepted this change if sufficient per-suasion had been applied. The General did not acquiesce .

Except for his demonstration before Hitler of the ineptitude and thedanger of what had been done in Vienna, the General's activities inBerlin had been absorbed by preparations for the coup against his owngovernment and the Legionary Movement . Antonescu had had this coupin his tormented mind from the first hours of our collaboration, fromthe moment he ordered General Coroama-the general who had de-clared that he would never order his troops to fire against the Legion-aries-from his Bucharest command to a command in the north of thecountry. It was of supreme importance to Antonescu that the Germanauthorities be won over to his plans, or at least that they be preparedto acquiesce to the fait accompli .

From our first moment in Berlin I realized that something was goingon between the General and his German interlocutors that the Generaldid not want me to know about . This "something" could not have any-thing to do with the most confidential item of our Berlin agenda, thediscussions about the probability and even imminence of hostilities withSoviet Russia, as I had always been present at those discussions .

After our first meeting with Ribbentrop, General Antonescu managedtwo interviews with him tete-a-tete, an unusual procedure, about whichhe gave me no notice and no account . Each time I met Ribbentrop, he

186 / The Suicide of Europe

asked me, "Why do we not meet more often?" He once gave me aninteresting inkling about what was going on between the General andhimself during those conversations in which he would have liked me, itseems, to be present, when he told me in a very serious tone, with sincereconcern in his voice, "Don't ever get in a conflict with the army. YourMovement would be annihilated." Surprised, I explained that love andrespect for our armed forces were a law and a tradition in the LegionaryMovement, and that a general, General Cantacuzene, a paragon of honorand gallantry, had been the right arm of Corneliu Codreanu. By choos-ing General Antonescu as leader of the new regime we had once againgiven proof of this love and respect .What happened during our audience with Hitler went even beyond

what I would have expected from Antonescu's uninhibited schemingand left no doubt in my mind about the nature of his activities behindmy back. At our arrival at the Reichskanzelei, Antonescu was invitedinto Hitler's office first-a normal procedure if one accepted the fictionthat the General was somewhat of a chief of state (this idea was acceptedat the Vatican but not at the Quirinal) . When after about half an hourof waiting I was also invited into Hitler's office, I found to my greatastonishment that Ribbentrop was there . What had been said amongthose three was divulged to me next day at lunch at the Reichskanzeleiwhen Hitler suddenly turned to me and said, "You do not know GeneralAntonescu. You could not find a greater patriot to defend Rumania'sinterests ." Rather irritated by this second unjustified attempt to put theMovement in a reprehensible position toward Antonescu, I answeredthe Fiihrer briskly, "If we had not realized this, we would not havechosen him as our leader." I added, "Our sacrifices have been great, asYour Excellency knows ." In a calmer tone Hitler told me that he knewall about it .

That same morning I had informed General Antonescu in a violentoutburst that I would not have any more contact with him in Berlin,that he was not to count on me for our adherence to the Tripartite Pact,and that I would not leave Berlin with him. The reason for this lastdecision will be explained in the next chapter. Antonescu protested,arguing that the ceremony of our departure had been communicated tous by the protocol department and that my presence was obligatory . Iexplained that I had already arranged things with the Wilhelmstrasse :after the official leave-taking, our train was to stop at a suburban stationwhere I would get out .Another proof of Antonescu's intrigues came before our departure,

when I received a visit from the chief of the protocol department, aPomeranian who was six feet nine inches tall and who, somewhat em-barrassed, tried to explain why there was to be no customary exchange

Visit to Berlin-Four Are Three / 187of decorations this time. I understood very well. The National Socialistregime had distributed many ribbons and decorations to members ofCarol's administration who were later accused of murder and who werenow in prison; Antonescu's intrigues had left the German authoritieswith the impression that the same deplorable situation could again de-velop with another group of bearers of German decorations .

CHAPTER

XXIII

Treason by Misinformation-Past and Present

The reader will remember my interviews in Berlin with Ad-miral Canaris and with his subordinate Captain Muller . It was not untilthree months later that I got a clearer understanding-although perhapsnot clear enough-of the real meaning of Canaris's and Miiller's in-sistences concerning Moruzov's welfare and Great Britain's invincibility .

The stage is Berlin again, during our state visit with Antonescu . Thistime we were at the headquarters of Feldmarschall Wilhelm Keitel .Four persons are seated around a table upon which a map of EasternEurope is spread : Feldmarschall Keitel ; General Antonescu, RumanianPrime Minister ; this writer, Rumanian Foreign Minister ; and Dr. PaulSchmidt, the unnecessary but inevitable interpreter . We are discussingthe military situation in connection with the possibility of an armedconflict with Soviet Russia and in connection with the cooperation ofour armies in such an eventuality .

Needless to say it is the Feldmarschall and the General who are con-trolling the discussion, and I am awaiting with impatient curiosity theirwell-informed opinions about the comparative importance of the forcesthat would be engaged in such a conflict. It is with the greatest amaze-ment that I listen to the following:ANTONESCU (Tracing his forefinger across the map) : "From the

Baltic to the Black Sea, a mere line of defense. Behind it, a militaryterritory absolutely empty ."KEITEL (With conviction) : Es stimmt! ("Perfectly truel")I had good reason to be deeply shocked by such an incredible under-

estimate of Russia's military possibilities. I ventured therefore certainobservations, courteously listened to by the Feldmarschall, but rudelyinterrupted by Antonescu .

Back in my rooms at the sumptuous residence that had been reserved188

Treason by Misinformation-Past and Present / 189for the General and me, I tried to find an explanation for the strangeand identical delusion of the two men who, by their profession andpositions of high responsibility, ought to have been better informed thananyone else about Soviet Russia's military preparedness . Recollectionswere suddenly brought to my mind : Canaris, Moruzov, Mullerl

There was no doubt for me that without knowing it both Keitel andAntonescu had drawn their information from the same source, and thatthis source was very likely an intentionally misleading one . Moruzovwas, after all, nothing but a Communist agent . Canaris of course wasmore difficult to explain ; but neither is it easy to explain the activitiesof the Fabian Socialists in Great Britain, for instance, nor the activitiesof the anti-anti-Communists, who have penetrated the defense and se-curity organizations in so many countries of the Western World.

The relations between General Antonescu and this writer, alreadytense, were reaching the breaking point in Berlin . To take him into myconfidence in such circumstances would only have provoked useless and,perhaps, even dangerous complications for me. That is why I decided,despite the General's opposition, to remain in Berlin a few days afterhis departure . I wanted to see Ribbentrop alone and tell him the wholestory, the mistaken optimism of the two military men included, and lethim draw his own conclusions .

Ribbentrop failed to appear for the scheduled appointment. I had avery short interview at the Wilhelmstrasse with Baron von Weizsacker,one of the Undersecretaries of State . When I arrived in Bucharest Iwas almost immediately forced to resign, and I soon witnessed the coupd'etat, by which Antonescu, under the protection of German tanks andhowitzers, overthrew his own Government . For six months I was one ofAntonescu's prisoners in this scuffle . I never had the opportunity there-fore to warn any of the German authorities about the eccentric activi-ties of their highest intelligence agency .At the Nurnberg trials General Franz Halder, one of the state wit-

nesses and a prominent member of the Canaris conspiracy, which workedfrom the very first day of the war for the defeat of its own country,explained what the policy of this organization had been :

1. To represent Great Britain to Hitler and to the German Commandas secretly, but formidably, prepared to repulse an invasion at a timewhen there were only eight anti-aircraft batteries for the defense ofLondon .

2. To represent Soviet Russia, on the contrary, as unable to defendherself for more than a few weeks .

General Halder also explained how Canaris had sent Captain Mullerto investigate a report that a member of the German Embassy in Romewas in contact with enemy agents, and how of course Muller came back

190 / The Suicide of Europe

with a misleading report. At this Goring rose and cried, Aber dass wargemeiner Verrat! ("But this was vulgar treasonl") Mr . Jackson, theUnited States Prosecutor, retorted : "As it was against Hitler, the Generalcan only be congratulated ."

Why were not Himmler and his security department able to discoverthe treasonable activities of Canaris and his group? The question is stillunanswered . Were there two enemy infiltrations, a pro-Western one inthe Defense Service and a pro-Communist one in the Security Depart-ment? There are many reasons for not excluding this possibility .

At the last reception at the Reichskanzelei, Hitler, commenting onthe possibility of discovering new oil fields in Rumania, said to me, "Iunderstand the hesitations of your experts when they have to choosethe place for new borings ; I am like that when I have to decide whereto begin new military operations." Was Hitler still hesitating at the lastmoment between war in the east and an invasion of Great Britain? Whatwould have happened if I had uncovered the secret of the German De-fense Service? Would this knowledge and disclosure have been enoughto bring about the abandonment of the theory of the "mere line ofdefense," and an earnest preparation of the German Army for a victoriouswinter campaign in Russia?I would not venture an answer, but after reading jovial Baron

Weizsacker's memoirs, I warmly congratulated myself for having re-sisted the temptation to tell him during that short interview at theWilhelmstrasse what was on my mind . The Baron himself belonged tothis strange my-country-to-be-defeated underground ; and I wonder whatwould have been my chances of returning safely to Rumania if Canaris'sdedicated and expeditious services had been warned of my suspicionsand my intentions .

Keitel, Jodl, and other German generals who kept to the end theiroath of fidelity to their country and to their Commander-in-Chief havebeen criticized for having consented to operations contrary to sanemilitary doctrine . Those criticisms are unjust ; the operations entrustedto them and their comrades were carried out with unsurpassed brilliancyand professional competence . It was treason-the same treason that lurksand operates today in the Western camp-that threw the German Com-mand into the pitfall of an unexpected winter campaign without ade-quate preparation . It was Hitler's hypnotic vision of a German-British as-sociation for the defense of Western Civilization that deprived this com-mand of the only real benefit of their victory in France : the possibility ofconquering Great Britain . It was the Fiihrer's hesitation between the twonew offensives that gave Mussolini an opportunity to undertake the dis-astrous campaign against Greece, which deprived the German generals of

Treason by Misinformation-Past and Present / 191

forty divisions that would have permitted them to conclude victoriouslytheir march on Moscow before the first flakes of snow .When Keitel and Jodl were murdered in Nurnberg as a punishment

for their patriotism and their fidelity, their ashes were thrown into adustbin-as Time magazine reported with relish-by a French general,carried by him and three other generals, representing the four victoriousarmies, to a mountain inn, and thrown into the privy . We wonder ifwith Keitel, Jodl, and the other generals who were hanged or impris-oned, we did not lose the only kind of men who would have been ableto stop the next unavoidable Communist avalanche .

Misinformation is today, as at Canaris's time, serving the purposes ofCommunist interests . As an object lesson in treasonable information,the Canaris case applies faultlessly to the present precarious situationof the Western World, encircled, and penetrated by the Communist as-sault. The Free World is dying of a lie, of the most unforgivable sinaccording to our Christian creed: the sin against the spirit-to knowthe truth but to ignore it; to know the creeping, deadly universaladvance of the Nameless Beast, and to deny its existence . If we try todiscover through the past half century of dire experiences what has beenthe principal auxiliary of Communism's triumph, we will find it intreacherously organized misinformation, directed and coordinated fromsome mysterious headquarters through many hidden or notorious chan-nels, the principal visible vehicle of which is the so-called free press.That so many United States politicians accepted so easily the feloniousadvice of American pro-Mao Tse-tung agents, losing China thereby to thefree world, was chiefly to be attributed to the enormous volume of propa-ganda ground out by newspapers and magazines in order to present Maoand his gang as a group of honest patriots and agrarian reformers .

It was also organized press misinformation that bamboozled thosepoliticians into accepting the substitution of Communist or Communist-leaning leaders in many Central and South American countries for thepro-American statesmen who had been in charge .When the time came for the destruction of United States Senator

Joseph R. McCarthy it was not the American press alone but the freepress all over the world that got down to work in an unrelenting cam-paign of slander and misinformation the like of which had never beenseen before, in a successful effort to silence a man who courageously ex-posed the conspiracy.

We could continue these illustrations ad nauseam .The universal coverage, the parallelism, the visible discipline of the

campaigns of lies, slander and silence, do not leave any doubt about theexistence of a central directing factor. Therefore today there are many

192 / The Suicide of Europe

important facts which simply cannot be brought to the knowledge ofthe public at large . On the other hand, all the organs of the fourthestate participate as an unanimous chorus, or with unanimous silence,in the directed conspiracy of misinformation and concealment .

Every retreat of the Western World before the Communist advance,every gratuitous concession to the exigencies of the Beast, have beenpreceded by long periods, sometimes years, of treacherous misinforma-tion. Never have these nefarious activities been more brazenly at workthan at the present moment . This is understandable, because Westernpublic opinion has to be prepared to witness, without realizing it andwithout protesting, the early destruction of the only weapon that canguarantee a Western victory in the event of a conflict between West andEast: the potential power of explosion and resistance of the millionsof slaves behind the Iron and Bamboo Curtains . I could quote one ofthe most brilliant generals of the United States, a man well-versed inworld military and political affairs, who bluntly wrote me that he agreedthat it is only this power of explosion that can make up for the ominousnumerical inferiority of the NATO powers .

It was, therefore, easy to understand how earnestly and diligentlythe misinformation machinery has applied itself to help the WesternPowers rid themselves of their responsibilities toward the countries theyhanded over to the Communist Moloch at Teheran, at Yalta, and atPotsdam. Here, briefly, was the process, as disclosed by the activities ofthe free press and of the special advisers attached today to nearly everygovernment and to nearly every statesman in a post of command :

The machinery of deception has succeeded first in creating the impres-sion of a growing softening of East-West tension; this in a period whenCommunist insolence, Communist audacity, and Communist hostilityhave been increasing in both international dealings and in subversiveactivities around the world. Then, the imposture of what was calledNational Communism was put over on the gullible public, the NewYork Times being the standard bearer of this successful campaign .Then came the masquerade of a decisive split between Soviet Russia andRed China, which had as a logical consequence the necessity of givingthe Kremlin five million tons of wheat and whatever else it might need,thus transforming it into a quasi-ally of the powers from which theenslaved nations had once expected their liberation . What followed wasthe combined deceptive campaign about alleged fundamental changes inthe lives of the enslaved peoples (a rapid policy of liberalization wassupposed to be taking place), and about how the satellite governmentswere gallantly defying the Kremlin's tyranny .

This last paroxysm of misinformation was directly connected to the

Treason by Misinformation-Past and Present / 193new negotiations with the Bucharest Government announced by UnitedStates Secretary of State Dean Rusk "in order to see how economic andother relations could be improved and extended between Rumania andthe United States ." Selling the Rumanian Government industrial equip-ment, according to Rusk and Ambassador-at-Large W . Averell Harri-man would help Rumania liberate herself from the Soviet yoke . Was itin order to help Soviet Russia liberate herself from the Rumanian yoke,in this new fight between giants, that the United States Government"sold" five million tons of wheat to the Soviet Government?

Another of Dean Rusk's arguments-a part of the National Communismhoax-goes like this : "What we shall ask of a Communist country isnot what is its particular system of government, but what is its attitudetoward its neighbors ." Did the United States Government consider theattitude of Soviet Russia toward her neighbors, Estonia, Latvia, Lithua-nia, Poland, Hungary, Rumania, Czecho-Slovakia and Bulgaria, beforeextending to the Soviet Government economic and industrial help sogenerous in quality and quantity that former Eisenhower aide HaroldStassen once refused to communicate its particulars to the United StatesSenate, saying that it was too confidential a piece of information?Some reporters are perhaps misinformed, but others are misinforming

their readers. How could anybody who has passed even a few days in thecaptive countries believe that the murderous scoundrels who form theso-called governments would really dare break with Russia? They knowthat only the presence or the proximity of Soviet bayonets saves themfrom being hacked to pieces by their own people. How could anybodysuggest that the captive peoples prefer the new order of things knowing,as even the Hearst press has recognized, that if leaving their countrywere not strictly forbidden ninety percent of those peoples would al-ready be on the Western side of the Iron Curtain?

If I will dwell specially on Rumania, it is only because I can talkabout it more knowingly. But the reader may be sure that our plightis not in any way different from that of the other enslaved countries, andthat the discouraging effect of this new chapter in organized misinforma-tion is the same on all the peoples in Communist-dominated territories .

From the contribution of the Hearst press to the perpetuation ofCommunist tyranny in Rumania and in other enslaved countries wepick the two following contradictory statements :

Freedoms praised by the West, freedom of the ballot and the right tocriticize openly those in authority, are nonexistent . Armed guards andpolice dogs roam their borders, reinforcing a lace-work of barbed wire .The proletarian paradise still requires naked force to keep the inhabitantssafely immured.

194 The Suicide of Europe

And then, two columns of double-talking, highly paid journalesefurther on :

There is every possibility that the people in East Europe prefer the neworder of things, for all the oppression, to the ancient regime of their fore-fathers .

In Rumania the last repartition of the land, 1919-1920, had putninety-two percent of the tillable land and pastures into the hands ofthe peasants, who formed eighty percent of the population . For this lastand biggest redistribution of Rumania's agricultural domain, the formerowners were paid only one-third of one percent of the real value . Nomention of this important fact will be found in Hearst or Scripps-How-ard press reports . This was to be expected, for who would believe thatthe Rumanian peasantry preferred "the new way of doing things" whenall that they had was taken away from them .A more realistic account of conditions in the captive countries comes

from a correspondent of the Neue Ziiricher Zeitung traveling in Ru-mania in July 1965, who observed with amazement that wherever he sawpeasants working in the fields they were working like a gang of convictsunder the watchful eyes of rural policemen .As for the workers in industry, for which twenty percent of the peas-

antry was forcibly transported to the cities, it is enough to look at the pic-tures in the illustrated reports of American magazines to see in their facesthe unmistakable ravages of hunger and misery. An American lady whohad known prewar Rumania and visited it again in the summer of 1965wrote to my wife: "Those who have not seen the terrible conditionsof life there cannot imagine them ."

The "free press" loudly rejoiced upon learning that about two thou-sand political prisoners had been liberated from the Communist prisonsin Rumania. Many of these human wrecks had spent twenty years oftheir life there . What did the same press say or do for the defense ofthose prisoners while they were rotting in their endless captivity? Whydid that press not mention those tens of thousands of captives still in-carcerated in Rumanian or in Russian slave labor camps? What life islike in the Communist jails in Rumania the gentlemen of the presscould have found out by simply reading Leonard Krishner's best seller,Prisoner o f Red Justice .We know what life is like in Rumania. We know it by the contact

we still manage to have with our dear ones-those who have not beenliquidated or who did not die in captivity . "For the past fifteen yearsI have been living in a basement which has never seen a ray of sunlight,"writes one of our correspondents . Subnutrition, sordid lodgings, andslave work; this is the truth regarding the Hearst "paradise ."

Treason by Misinformation-Past and Present / 195In such conditions you may easily imagine how disastrous is the

impact on the morale of our people, on their hopes and dreams of libera-tion, of such statements as those of President Johnson, another obviousvictim of the conspiracy of misinformation when, in an appeal for peaceaddressed to the Kremlin gang, he tells them : "On both sides [of theIron Curtain], people are now more prosperous than they have everbeen in the past ."

Recently, one of my American correspondents expressed the fear that"the dangerous nonsense published by the Hearst press could result inthe discouragement of our allies behind the Iron Curtain." Indeed ithas. It seems to be the aim of the mendacious campaign to which theHearst press, the Scripps-Howard press, the New York Times, and manynewspapers and magazines in the United States, and in almost everycountry, contribute so brilliantly .

CHAPTER

XXIV

More About Truth and Directed Information

As a part of his keynote address in New York on June 19,1966, for the National Conference on Peace, Dr . John C. Bennett, Presi-dent of the Union Theological Seminary, deplored American obsessionwith Communism :

Communism is cruel in its early stage . But after the revolutionary periodit does become in many ways constructive . The United States should notassume the responsibility of taking any measure to prevent a nation in Asiafrom becoming Communist .

The theme submitted by Dr . Bennett and, strange to understand, byso many clerical personalities of every faith and denomination, has beenfor years a favorite with the international press . Communism, so goesthis theme, has passed the revolutionary stage ; it has slowly emergedfrom its turbulent youth into an honest, peaceful, constructive, andbeneficial regime. Accepted and appreciated by the populations underits rule ; it has assumed different characteristics in the different Com-munist countries, emancipated itself from Moscow, and ceased to be amenace to the rest of the world .

Rumania was recently chosen by the international opinion-buildingconspiracy as the best illustration for the propagation of this utterlyfalse theme. Bucharest has suddenly been bombarded with swarms ofreporters from every free country and from every controlled and control-lable newspaper-even from Spain, which learned the hard way what aCommunist regime represents, and even from the most Conservative ofthe Spanish papers .The methods used by these zealous pilgrims are not always the same .

A pretense of believing in potemkin villages is the most innocent one ;but recourse to downright fabrication is an accepted technique also .

196

More About Truth and Directed Information 197

American, German, French, and Spanish newspapers barefacedly af-firmed, for instance, that under the Communist regime something hasbeen done for the first time in Rumania for the Rumanian peasant, al-though every informed person must know-and reporters and chiefeditors are generally well-informed persons-that the so-called "capital-ist regime" had put into the hands of Rumania's peasantry ninety-twopercent of its agricultural land and that the Communist regime camealong and confiscated all of it. A typical attempt at similar misrepresen-tation was offered by Madrid's Arriba in an article of July 26, 1966, byCristobal Paez :

There are unmistakable signs of the existing evolution inside this society[Communist Rumania and others] that after twenty years of new politicalexperience it is about to pursue, without too much risk, some autochthonousformulas inspired by a democratic socialism . It would be improbable thatthose nations would follow a regressive direction, because it is very doubt-ful that Rumanians, Yugoslavs and Bulgarians have suffered more underthe present [Communist] socio-economic order than under the oligarchiccapitalist order of yore .

The Reverend Richard Wurmbrand is no paid reporter, and he hasno vested interest in an economic agreement with the Bucharest Govern-ment. His credentials are only his obvious sincerity and the fact that hespent twenty years in Communist Rumania-most of them in prison .It is to his testimony that we will turn to help our readers discoverwhether the Communist Government has changed in Rumania, orwhether things there are now the same as they were during the earlyyears of the regime. Perhaps we shall also discover that all the uproarabout Rumania's return to a "democratic" way of life is due not onlyto some powerful industrial interests but also to the fact that-as AlfonsDalma points out in the Deutsche Wochen Zeitung-the Bucharest Gov-ernment has been assigned a special mission by the Kremlin of confusionand disruption complementing de Gaulle's too erratic performances .Choosing Nicolae Ceaucescu, among other Communist stooges, to play"grandmother" wolf to NATO's Little Red Riding Hood (to use anArriba metaphor) was for Moscow a natural thing to do, Rumania beingthe most controllable of all the subjugated countries due to its uniquegeographic position and its lack of any direct contact with the free world .

Here, then, are some of Reverend Wurmbrand's declarations beforethe United States Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, and someprivate institutions :

Before the United States Senate :Such talk from people of the cloth is incomprehensible . Dr. Bennett had

to know better than that . Those clergymen say we must help the Commu-nists . Where were they when so many Christians needed their help?

198 / The Suicide o f Europe

New York Times, September 4, 1966 :A Rumanian evangelical minister stripped to the waist during the Senate

hearing today to show eighteen scars he said had been inflicted by Commu-nist torturers . "My body represents Rumania, my country," he said, "whichhas been tortured to the point that it can no longer weep ."

Glendale News Press :As he told his story in Washington's modernistic Saint Matthew's Lu-

theran church, parishioners wept . When he told details of his imprisonmentto Senators and Congressmen, faces turned white .

Detroit News, July 5, 1966 :He told the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee of fourteen years im-

prisonment in Rumania prisons . . . . His captors attempted to force himto inform on persons who took part in clandestine religious meetings, andused knives, clubs and other weapons in their efforts .

Minneapolis Tribune, August 5, 1966 :"I have eighteen holes in my body put there by Communists . I was beaten

with nylon whips made in America and transported from prison to prisonin American cars . I do not ask Americans to help me ; I ask them to stopaiding our oppressors." In fourteen years in prison the Pastor Wurmbrandand some four hundred other Christians "were fed sometimes a slice ofbread a week. Often prisoners had to eat excrement and drink urine . Istill cannot look at an American breakfast without feeling it is too big,too wonderful . . . . I am terrified ." During the period of Christian oppres-sion, Dr. Wurmbrand said, the Americans gave more and more to the Ru-manian government and did nothing about the condition of the Christiansin Rumania.

Human Events:"It was only during the period when the Rumanian Communist govern-

ment was intent on getting American aid dollars that they interrupted theirdemands for money in exchange for freeing anti-Communist prisoners," saidPastor Wurmbrand. "Now again, no one can get out of jail or leave thecountry without paying money, sometimes as much as $25,000 ." In theUnited States for the first time, this extraordinary man, whose faith burnswith the same bright flame as Saint Paul's, is a convert from Judaism .

San Mateo Times :"When I was in Philadelphia I attended an anti-Vietnam war rally and

heard a man actually praising the Communists. I asked him how he knewabout Communism and then I showed him my back. They would not let metalk. Someone cut the microphone wires." Wurmbrand described one par-ticular grisly episode that involved a friend of his, a Catholic priest . "Theytortured him until he went mad. They made him say the Mass over his ownexcrement. He did not know what he was doing. It was terrible."

New York Times, September 5, 1966 :Mr. Wurmbrand said the Rumanian Orthodox church [more correctly

the pseudo-Rumanian Orthodox Church] has sent agents to the UnitedStates to conspire against an estimated total of 300,000 Rumanians livinghere .

More About Truth and Directed Information / 199South Bend Tribune, May 19, 1966 :

He [Pastor Wurmbrand] arrived here Tuesday as a guest of Clarence E .Manion, head of the Manion Forum, an organization of conservative polit-ical thought. "Drugs were sometimes used [said the pastor] to induce con-fession . . . . A more subtle method of gaining testimony was to force a vic-tim to swallow three or four teaspoons of salt an hour without water . . . .

Florida Times-Union, May 7, 1966 :Wurmbrand quoted the prison commandant in Bucharest as addressing

the prisoners in this fashion : "You foolsl You expect the Americans to comesome day and release you . They are coming now to do business with usl Ifyou beg Americans to help you, they ignore you . If you insult them, theyhelp you ."Before the United States Senate :

I have seen Communist guards single out a young Catholic priest anddemand he denounce God in front of his fellow prisoners . The priest re-fused and they dragged him away . We never saw him again. But in hisface we had seen God and our faith grew that much stronger . I lived withthe saints and martyrs of the twentieth century . . . . I saw a Catholic priestdie boasting that the Pope would never shake hands with a Communist . Iam glad he does not know it happened .

As Reverend Wurmbrand told his story, says an eyewitness, Senators'and Congressmen's faces turned white and bystanders wept . We wonderhow many of those who heard him are still obsessed by what they hadbeen told, and how many of the Senators and Congressmen who knownow what they should have known years ago have made a decisionto dedicate themselves to a constant effort to help the oppressed nationsin their yearning for liberty and finally in their fight for it, rather thancontinue to help their oppressors establish more firmly and more safelytheir abhorred domination .

Reverend Wurmbrand, this "convert from Judaism whose faith burnswith the same bright flame as Saint Paul's," this gallant defender of thethrottled and the persecuted, this brother of all captives of the NamelessBeast, preaches, we are afraid, in the desert. The clamor of his denuncia-tion will soon be smothered by the deafening and bewildering vocifera-tions of the "free press" ; unctuous bishops will continue to pour forththeir insidious pro-Communist balderdash ; hypocritical or opportunisticpoliticians will still recommend financial and economic help to Com-munist governments ; tyrants and torturers will continue to be the guestsand the hosts of presidents, kings, and popes .

CHAPTERxxv

Another Night in Jilava

Jilava is the dampest, ugliest group of casemates in the oldline of fortifications that surround Bucharest . From the very beginningof the anti-Legionary terror, Jilava was the most used and the most sin-ister of the prisons into which Rumanian young people were thrownwithout a trial, were tortured and killed . It was to Jilava's back yardthat the garotted corpses of Codreanu and his companions were taken,bullet-riddled to simulate an escape attempt, and buried in a commongrave. It was in Jilava also that a selected group of the murderers ofCodreanu (and of more than four hundred Legionaries) had been in-carcerated under a Legionary guard, doubling the military garrison .The listing of the group of murderers who were to be brought before

the Rumanian courts was determined by Prime Minister Antonescuand by Vice President Horia Sima, who was also Commandant of theLegionary Movement.

After the fall of Carol [says Horia Sima] the Legionaries could have beenleft to take their revenge . Although during the anti-Legionary terror-when so many friends and comrades were strangled, shot in their prisons, orburned alive-I often swore to be equally merciless on the day of our victory,the idea of such a bloodbath profoundly repulsed me . I simply couldn't gothrough with it, and I could read the same sentiment in the eyes of all thosewho surrounded me in those moments . There was first of all the Christianfoundation of our Movement . Also we felt that it would have been degrad-ing the greatness of our sacrifice if we were to indulge in an act of vengeance .We are not a blood thirsty people ; killing for a Rumanian is a difficultthing. . . . Carol's regime was not a Rumanian regime. The assassination ofthe Captain and of his followers was the result of a concerted internationalplan, the control of which was not inside Rumania . The Iron Guard [theLegionaries] represented an obstacle to the Communization of Rumaniaand of Eastern Europe, and this obstacle had to be removed . Carol, Cali-

200

Another Night in Jilava / 201nescu and all their stooges belonged to a conspiracy of European ori-gin . . . .

We therefore chose justice, chose the legal way . Huge demonstrations,songs of victory, acclamations, yes . . . but all in perfect order. No Le-gionary lifted a finger against any of his enemies . The greatest victory wewon was over ourselves. It was the victory of Light and Spirit. Just out ofprison, with our physical and spiritual wounds still fresh, with the distress-ing vacuum left around us by so many victimized comrades, we did notchoose to take justice into our hands.

The drawing up of the list of culprits was not an easy thing . If all thosewho had contributed to the murders of our comrades had been arrestedwithout some sort of discrimination, they would have numbered about onethousand individuals. . . . Nobody would have been surprised if all thosewho had filled the many appointments of Carol had been considered as re-sponsible. Legally speaking, the members of a government are responsiblefor governmental decisions even if they have not personally taken part intheir execution . But in [Carol's] Government there were two categories ofbureaucrats; those few who had been among the most ruthless enemies ofthe Movement, who were prepared to embrace any criminal activity ; andthose, much more numerous, who were simply covering up those activitieswith their names and their prestige in exchange for the advantages of theirministerial status. . . . The Carol regime, like every dictatorship, had aninner structure. This network of assassins had ramifications in the judicialsystem, the army, the police-in fact in every state apparatus . It representedwhat was then called the "state permanency" ; it was in fact Carol's NKVD,which depended directly on him and reported only to the Royal Palace .This group did not consist of more than about one hundred persons .

We limited responsibility for crimes to this group (in fact to only a partof this group of notorious criminals) . . . . General Antonescu was aston-ished at our restraint . He wanted many more arrests; he wanted to includein the projected trials purely political cases, which we refused to do . I referhere to the General's attitude before November 1940. After that it changedcompletely . My part at the beginning had been to try to moderate Anto-nescu's personal vendettas . . . . We limited ourselves to the principal crim-inals, but separated them into three categories : 1 . The Generals and Colo-nels under whose control, as county prefects or province Governors, fourhundred of the most prominent Legionaries had been executed . ThoseGenerals and Colonels were not molested in any way but were sent backto their posts in the army . 2 . The gendarmerie officers, police officers andagents who had limited themselves to the execution of orders received with-out committing any special cruelty or demonstrating any excess of zeal . Theyreceived only an administrative penalty ; they were dismissed . 3. The groupof notorious assassins who had been principally responsible, whatever theirorigin-army, police, gendarmerie, civil or military justice, etc . They werearrested and were brought before the courts .

I repeat that this conception of limiting to the minimum the list of al-leged culprits was exclusively ours . [Cazul Iorga-Madgearu (The Iorga-Madgearu Case) by Horia Sima .]

It was this group of sixty-four individuals who were detained in Jil-ava. The Movement, its leaders, the victims of so much slander and

202 / The Suicide o f Europe

silence, were impatiently awaiting the beginning of the trials . Ratherthan for the satisfaction of revenge, they were waiting for the day oftruth to arrive, when all of the injustices, the cruelties, and the humilia-tions to which they had been subjected, all that they had had to endurein their flesh and their spirit, would be revealed .

It was left to Mihai Antonescu, the Minister of justice, to determinethe nature of the proceedings and the date of the appearance in courtof the accused men . After two months no progress had been made in theinquiry except for the publication of the interrogation relating to themurder of the Captain. The two principal culprits were of course be-yond the reach of justice, Calinescu being dead and Carol being inPortugal. There was on the part of the Minister of justice an open andwillful bungling of the judicial procedure and continuous and unex-plainable postponements of the trial's opening . Before leaving for Berlin,I had warned him about the grave consequences of his continuous pro-crastination, unpleasant for everybody concerned. "You would not like,"I told him, "to see one morning sixty-four corpses before the stairs ofyour Ministry, lined up like wild boars after a hunt ."

Mihai Antonescu's motivations were easy to understand . Formerly anactive partisan of Titulescu's politics and, consequently, a declaredenemy of the Movement, he had many friends among the Jilava pris-oners and, quite likely, sympathies for all of them . But, more importantthan this, the continuation of the tense situation created by his inactionwas opening new areas for his intrigues between the General and theLegionary members of the Government . Those who knew the aversionof Horia Sima and of his Legionary colleagues for any sort of bloodshed,knew also that if the trial of the Jilava prisoners had finally taken place,the number of those who would have paid with their lives for the crimesthey had committed would have been only a small part of those who hadbeen arrested-in fact probably only three or four .I was still in Berlin when my wife phoned me the distressing and

shocking news of the mass execution of the Jilava prisoners by a groupof Legionaries. My wife informed me also of the consternation andexasperation of Horia Sima and of my other Legionary colleagues inthe Government at this act of violence which was contrary to the prin-ciples, the intentions, and the most fundamental interests of the Move-ment. Their anger was so much greater because two men against whomno charges had been brought, Professor lorga and Virgil Madgearu, aformer Minister of Iuliu Maniu's party, had also been assassinated .This, they realized, could only be the work of instigators, enemies ofthe Movement . Those two murders were indeed scientifically calculatedto do as much harm as possible to the Legion: they provoked the indig-nation of European opinion, Professor lorga having been a universally

Another Night in Jilava / 203admired historian, and they might have caused Iuliu Maniu, chief of theNational Peasant Party, the only important politician who had shownany sympathy for the Captain and the Movement, to turn against us .

The infamous Nurnberg court established the following judicial pre-cedences : 1 . That of collective guilt and collective punishment . 2 . Thatof the responsibility of a subordinate in executing the orders of hissuperior. 3. In the case of Julius Streicher and others, that of the re-sponsibility-to the limit even of capital punishment-of those who wereconvicted of having helped, by their books or articles, to create anatmosphere propitious to crime .

If the Legionary Movement had followed the Nurnberg road, it couldhave arraigned before its tribunals not only whole governments, butwhole political parties; and among the dozens of publicists, newspaper-men and columnists who could have been indicted for their constant,mendacious, and perverted activities in helping the murderers by theirpen and prestige, the most conspicuous would have been Nicolae lorga .Without his complicity neither Carol nor Calinescu would have daredsuppress Codreanu .

It was not only the removal of Codreanu from Rumania's politicallife that lorga had wanted ; it was his death . It was lorga who providedthe Palace camarilla with the pretext for the arrest and condemnationof Codreanu at the very moment Codreanu was about to leave forItaly and had ordered the demobilization of his followers, ordered themback to their studies and work, and requested that they accept passivelyany injustices and acts of violence; and it was Iorga who, with Carol andCalinescu, contrived the necessary measures to prevent the victim fromescaping the claws of his kidnappers . It was lorga again, alone amongthe heads of political parties or important politicians, who helped ac-tively to promote the false idea of a Legionary conspiracy, a lie thateventually brought the Captain to the cell from which there was no wayout but to his grave in Jilava .

However, besides those few misguided fools led by Traian Boeru, anagent provocateur, every Legionary from the ranks to the highest com-mand was shocked and revolted at lorga's assassination, and realizedthat Iorga dead hurt them more than Iorga alive could have ever donein any imaginable circumstances .

When passing judgment on the acts of violence of individual membersof the Legionary Movement-acts justified, if violence is ever justified,as a result of inhuman provocations-we must not forget that thoseprovocations had always been premeditated, organized, ordered andexecuted by the official organs of the regime : the King, members of theGovernment, and their higher and lower officials. The Legionaries' actsof violence had always, without exception, been perpetrated without the

204 The Suicide of Europe

knowledge of and contrary to the intentions of the Legionary leaders.Also, we must observe that each time the command of the Legion wasdisorganized or destroyed by incarcerations and murders, the Move-ment was obliged to produce new leaders, who needed a certain time tomake themselves known and to establish their authority . Such a situa-tion existed after the incarceration of the Captain and of his principallieutenants, and as a result of the general slaughter that followed Cali-nescu's execution .Exactly what happened on the night of November 26 to November

27, 1940? Mr . Prost, to whom we always like to refer, says only this inhis aforementioned book about Codreanu's assassination : "During thenight of November 29 to November 30 [1938], Codreanu was sup-pressed . . . ." 1 He is much more loquacious when he talks about thatother night in Jilava, when Codreanu's murderers paid for their crimes :

In order to exculpate themselves, the murderers pretended that on thenight of November 26 to 27 [1940], they were in the graveyard of Jilavaexhuming the bodies of Codreanu and the other Legionaries, who hadbeen executed on November 30, 1938, in preparation for the solemn fu-neral that was to take place on the second anniversary of their death .When they saw the corpses they were struck by a sacred wrath that madethem turn upon those who had tortured their [Captain]?

When Mr. Prost tells so great a part of the truth he has to put it in thehypothetical mode in order not to weaken his theme . What Mr. Prostpretends not to believe is exactly what happened, or more exactly, a partof what happened .

General Antonescu had appointed as president of the commission ofinquiry into Carol's atrocities a member of the Court of Cassation, thesame court that had rejected each and all of the more than one hundredappeals brought forward by Codreanu's lawyers . General Antonescu didnot allow any representative of the Movement to take part in the inves-tigation, although such participation would have been perfectly legalin an investigatory commission .

As long as the General, for motives better known to himself, was moreimplacable than the leaders of the Movement about the punishment ofCarol's stooges, the commission showed a certain amount of activity .In the first weeks of November, however, the General suddenly changedhis whole attitude, and the commission, which followed rigorously theinstructions of the Minister of justice, slowed down its activities almostto a full stop; later it transformed itself into a medical commission,demanding the transfer to a sanatorium of the major culprits. Asked by

1 Destin de la Roumanie, p . 122 . Italics added .2 Ibid ., p . 156.

Another Night in Jilava / 205Horia Sima how much longer the inquiry commission would need tomake ready its report, Mihai Antonescu answered that it needed atleast seven or eight months more. Sima tried vainly to convince GeneralAntonescu that such a delay would be interpreted by the Legionaries asan effort to save Carol's butchers .

It was under such circumstances that, in preparation for the solemnfuneral that was decided for the second anniversary of the Captain'sassassination, a group of Legionaries were ordered to exhume the bodiesof Codreanu and his companions . They found them hidden underseveral tons of concrete, corroded by the vitriol that had been pouredon them, the ropes still twisted about their throats, with fettered feetand arms. The Captain's body was recognized by its size and by a littlecrucifix Codreanu always wore around his neck . But the sight of thoselamentable and cherished remains would not have been enough to pro-voke the state of "sacred wrath" mentioned by Mr . Prost, had not twowell-calculated acts of provocation occurred.

"Nothing would have happened in Jilava," says Horia Sima, "if to theformer provocation two others much more dangerous had not occurredduring the exhuming itself." That which brought their spirits near thepoint of explosion was the sacrilegious intervention of Eugeniu Bunescu,member of the Court of Cassation and president of the inquiry com-mission, who appeared suddenly during the exhuming and found itnecessary to shout to the toiling Legionaries : "Have you not ended yetthis sinister comedy!" But the explosion proper was provoked by Gen-eral Antonescu's order, which reached the prison at this very inappro-priate moment, that the Legionary guard be dismissed and replaced bythe military garrison.

The General took this step [says Horia Sima] in a question that directlyconcerned the Movement, without consulting me. The order had beentransmitted to the military authorities that shared with the Legionaries thegarrisoning of Jilava . I learned about this order the next day, when thearrested people were no longer alive . But among the Legionaries who werebusy with the exhumation the revolting news spread like lightning duringthe very night the order was transmitted. The perturbation was general .People looked at one another with dismay and did not know what to be-lieve . "The General has betrayed us," they argued. "We have had severalindications already . The removing of the Legionary guard is the final proof ."Lashed into fury at those thoughts, they left shovels and spades and ran topay their debt to their Captain's memory . . . . The punishment of theJilava criminals was not a premeditated action . Legionaries who in normalcircumstances would not have been capable of the slightest act of brutalitytook part in it .

Mr. Prost covered his face, mentioning that one of the executionerswas only twenty-two years old. He never mentioned the age and sex of

206 / The Suicide of Europe

the hundreds of massacred Legionaries . The "free press" and the com-mentators of our time still express their horror when referring to theexecution of the sixty-four murderers ; but they expressed no indigna-tion when the Captain and four hundred Rumanian young people werebutchered like cattle and thrown into common graves .

Responsible for the mass execution at Jilava were General Antonescuand his alter ego, Mihai Antonescu. My comrades in the National Le-gionary Government, younger and therefore more generous than I, con-tinued to believe for a long time in the General's sincerity toward theMovement; almost from the beginning I was convinced that his onlysincerity was toward his own morbid ambitions. I call them morbidbecause Antonescu had in his hands enough to satisfy the most ambi-tious leader of men : a population of content and active peasantry thatowned more than ninety percent of Rumania's arable land ; disciplinedand gallant soldiers ; a youth eager to redeem the shame and the errorsof the past regime ; a nonexistent opposition ; and, to defend him againstconspirators and traitors, all the moral, spiritual and physical power ofthe Iron Guard, of the Legionaries .

This ought to have satisfied him if his ambitions had been identicalwith those of his mutilated and threatened country . But this was notthe case, as was shown when the General, on the eve of an imminent war,deprived his country of the enthusiasm, the valor and the steadfastnessof the most faithful of its sons . He did this solely because he did notwant to share a page of glory, which he believed easy to write, with theshadow of Corneliu Codreanu .

CHAPTER

XXVI

How We Parted

At the end of November 1940, upon returning from ourconference in Berlin, I found General Antonescu in a somber mood,pretending to believe in the possibility of a Legionary conspiracy andeven in a projected attempt against his life. Everyone admitted intohis presence, except the members of the Government, was thoroughlysearched for hidden weapons by his aide-de-camp, Colonel Elefterescu .The acute crisis between him and the Movement, provoked by the Jilavatragedy, had, however, already subsided . In fact, I believe that theGeneral and Mihai Antonescu were much less distressed by what hadhappened than the Legionary members of the Government . They nolonger had to worry about the trial of the accused men, which wouldhave confronted them with important political and personal difficulties .As for Mihai Antonescu, his principal mission at the justice Department-saving those men-no longer necessary, he was able to concentrateupon securing the appointment of his dreams : that of Minister of For-eign Affairs. In the strategy of their long-planned coup against their ownGovernment, the capture of the Foreign Office and of the Ministry ofthe Interior were for the Antonescus two important preliminary steps .

My intention had always been to keep my office until the moment Iwas able to summon the Soviet Envoy and present him with an ulti-matum for his Government to evacuate the stolen provinces withintwenty-four hours, after which I would have joyfully yielded my arm-chair to anybody who wanted it, and gone to join my regiment. Myexperiences in Berlin and a confidential message I had received fromHerr Fabricius to the effect that "the Cossacks will very soon regret theday they brought their horses to water in the Danube" reinforced mydecision to stick it out and not to break with Antonescu, no matter whatthe provocation, until the long-awaited moment .

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The trouble was that for the same reason-the knowledge that warbetween Germany and Russia was close at hand-General Antonescudecided desperately to break with the Movement at whatever price . Thiswas a rather knotty undertaking that called for some preparatory oper-ations, the first being to win the control of our contact with Berlin . Thisled to outbursts of verbal aggression of increasing impropriety againsthis Minister of Foreign Affairs . These outbursts greatly amused bystand-ers and I generally shrugged my shoulders at them .The final crisis between the General and me was provoked-as I

learned later-by the recall of Fabricius and the substitution of a prom-inent member of the National Socialist Party, Baron Manfred von Kil-linger. The General was convinced that Fabricius's recall was the resultof some intrigues of mine, and that that was the purpose of my extrathree days in Berlin . He was absolutely wrong .'The General's annoyance was understandable . Fabricius had given

him complete cooperation in his intrigues between Berlin and the Le-gionary command. In the appointment of a militant member of theNational Socialist Party, the General saw the danger of better relationsbetween the German Legation and this Command, a fact that wouldhave ruined his most cherished plan : to break with the Movement with-out antagonizing Berlin . Antonescu's alarm was superfluous for two rea-sons: Fabricius left Bucharest only after causing the Movement the great-est possible harm ; Killinger, as German Envoy, was to be still more ob-tuse with regard to Rumanian circumstances and to the importance ofthe Movement in case of a conflict with Soviet Russia . During all of hisactivities in Bucharest, Baron Killinger was our greatest enemy, untilthat night in September 1944 when he blew out his brains, accompaniedin his suicide by the poor girl who was his private secretary .

At the news that Fabricius was leaving, the General really got to work .I received unexpectedly from him a severe note on the margin of an oldreport of the Ministry of the Interior, relating to a rather unimportantincident between Rumanian and Hungarian customs authorities . "Didmy Minister of Foreign Affairs inform me about it? No, he did not!"read the note . I replied that the report was long overdue, that the inci-dent had already been settled, and that it occurred while we were in Ber-lin and Mihai Antonescu was my interimary . The General did not

1 According to Herr Andreas Hillgruber, Antonescu told Fabricius that I had boastedto him of having provoked, while in Berlin, Fabricius' recall . The truth is that at nomoment did I busy myself while in Berlin, or at any time, with the question of Ger-many's representation in Bucharest, and that I had nothing to do with Killinger'sappointment . It was another item in Antonescu's collection of fabrications, the pur-pose of this one obviously being to feed the hostile feelings of Herr Fabricius towardthe Legionary Movement. Antonescu relied on these hostile feelings to help him inBerlin in his campaign of intrigue and slander against the Movement .

How We Parted / 209

relent; the report came back to me with another comment: "Did myMinister of Foreign Affairs try to find out if Mr . Mihai Antonescu hadinformed me about the incident? No, he did not!"

I was used to such proceedings, and generally they amused me . But tomy great astonishment there was another marginal note on the samereport, absolutely irrelevant to its content . In red ink and underlined itread, "What does my Minister of Foreign Affairs intend to do-provokea war with Russia?" A few days later, and with apparent concern, theGeneral told our Envoy in Rome, Victor Vojen, "With his brutal waysSturdza was about to throw me into a war with Russia ."

With blue pencil under the red-penciled question, I wrote, "Of courseI would like to have a war with Russia" and sent the document back tothe General. But even today I do not know for the life of me whatprompted General Antonescu to challenge me about Rumania's rela-tions with Moscow on the occasion of such an unrelated episode. Twomonths had passed since the border incident at the Rumanian-Russianfrontier and nothing had occurred since then that could explain the Gen-eral's dramatic outburst, unless he had completely and suddenly lost hismind.

I remembered, however, a visit of the Soviet Envoy two days beforeAntonescu's unaccountable outburst . The interview went off exactly ashad five or six others with that same individual . The Envoy always cameaccompanied by a secretary. Without shaking hands I always asked themvery courteously to sit down . The Russian Envoy would then extractfrom his pocket a document, read it in Russian, punctuating his readingby jabbing his finger at the paper. After that, his secretary would reada French version of the same document . The whole procedure was, ofcourse, unusual and even somehow impertinent . In order to indicate mydispleasure, all during the Russian reading I would busy myself ostensi-bly with some papers on my desk. At the end of the French reading, Iwould ask the secretary if his boss had anything more to say . The answerwas generally negative and my guest would depart with no more hand-shakes than at their arrival, leaving behind them the French text . Theanswer was communicated to them after consultation with the generalswho were our delegates at the Rumanian-Russian commission of Tighinaand who were in charge of the solution of the various questions left un-solved after the departure of Rumanian troops .

Nothing out of the ordinary had happened during the last interviewexcept, perhaps, that I shortened it because of the accumulated matterson my desk. If the Russian Envoy had decided to complain about theway I treated him, and if this had motivated Antonescu's intemperateoutbreak, it meant that once again the General had broken the promisehe had given me not to receive foreign envoys in my absence . Realizing

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that this time Antonescu was prepared for any extremity, I decided tosteal a march on him and send him that same night a formal letter ask-ing him to choose between my resignation and his promise to let me ad-minister my department from then on without unnecessary interference .

My only further contact with Antonescu was when his aide-de-camp,Colonel Elefterescu, at the usual time of the yearly distribution of dis.tinctions, phoned me on behalf of his chief to learn my preferences . Iasked Elefterescu to thank the General, but to tell him that I did notknow where to hang the hardware I already had .As I have mentioned, Fabricius did not leave Bucharest before playing

his last and meanest trick-a trick that could not even have been triedif I had still been Minister of Foreign Affairs .Fabricius had been ordered to transmit to Prime Minister Antonescu

and to Vice President Horia Sima, the Commandant of the LegionaryMovement, Hitler's invitation to visit him in Berchtesgaden . If such ameeting had taken place, it would have been very difficult for the Gen-eral to continue his intrigues against the Movement, with the Fiihrerand Herr Ribbentrop, and very easy for Horia Sima to thwart them .

Fabricius' duty called for him to inform the Vice President, personally,of Hitler's invitation . He did not do this, but preferred to entrust MihaiAntonescu with the message . Mihai Antonescu falsified it . Horia Simawas informed that, thanks to the insistence of the General and MihaiAntonescu, he, Sima, had also been invited to accompany the General onhis visit. Sima, who had not forgotten what had happened to me in Berlinin the Fi hrer's anteroom, excused himself, and the meeting which wouldhave forestalled General Antonescu's coup against the Movement didnot take place .

CHAPTER

XXVII

Antonescu's Putsch

I t is, perhaps, because of the stability in the political life ofthe two big English-speaking countries that there is no appropriate wordin that language for a violent attempt against the established order . Be-tween the French coup d'etat and the German Putsch we have chosenthe latter for the title of this chapter, since without the assistance of theastute Fabricius and of the opaque General Hansen, commander of theGerman troops in Rumania, Antonescu could not have carried out hislong-premeditated assault against the Iron Guard and his own Govern-ment.

This history of the Legionary Movement offers problems that evenMme. Denise Basdevant, one of the most specialized slanderers of theMovement, has not been able to solve in her book Terres Roumainesconte Vents et Marees (Rumanian Cliffs against Wind and Tide), theworthy counterpart of Prost's Destin de la Roumanie . She expresses deepperplexity when talking about what she calls the "Legionary Rebellion" :"It seems to me difficult to understand that the Legionaries, who alreadyhad the power in their hands, would have prepared a Putsch in order toget it." We can easily help Mme . Basdevant with this puzzle . In January1941 there was no Legionary Putsch, but a Putsch of General Antonescuagainst his own Government in order to take by force that bit of author-ity that had been assigned to the Legionary Movement by the writtenarrangement between him and Horia Sima-an arrangement that hadbeen ratified by the King and was the fundamental charter of the Na-tional Legionary Government .At what moment did Antonescu decide to violate this charter and all

the solemn verbal assurances he so often gave the Movement's leaders?Personally, I am convinced that it was at the very moment of the signingof the agreement. The General's pledge was accompanied by an impor-

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tant mental reservation, which of course could not have been perceivedby Horia Sima and his companions. According to the written agreement,the Movement in its organic entirety, with its Commander and its hier-archy, subordinated itself to the General in exchange for the promisethat its hierarchy and its entirety would be strictly respected . The Gen-eral had never been satisfied with this arrangement ; he wanted to takethe direction of the Movement not only from Horia Sima's hands, butmost especially from the hands of Corneliu Codreanu, dead and non-existent for him but forever alive for the Iron Guard and forever itsstandard bearer .The Legionary greeting, even after the Captain's assassination, had

always been and still is Traiascd Legiunea si Cdpitanul, which means"Long live the Legion and the Captain ." Antonescu could not under-stand it and wanted it to be changed to "Long live the Legion and theGeneral." The Movement's leadership would have perhaps agreed to it,but they knew that such a change would have provoked a real revolu-tion among the ranks. It was perhaps unjust to ask an egomaniac suchas the General to understand this immovable fidelity for a deceasedchief, and still more difficult to convince him that this fidelity was thebest guarantee of the Movement's faithfullness to him .Antonescu had conceived the sharing of the power that the Legionary

insurrection had forced Carol to relinquish only with the unexpressedhope of snatching, sometime and somehow, the command of the Move-ment from the hands of its accepted leaders . Signs of this mental reserva-tion had been visible from the first contact between Antonescu and us .In fact, it was obvious from the moment he had sent General Coroamato a far removed command because Coroama had declared to Carol thathe would never shoot at Legionaries . In the same vein, only a few daysafter the constitution of his National Legionary Government, complain-ing about the alleged intransigence of the Movement's leaders, towardthe delegation of a certain women's organization, he expounded : "But,be sure that I will never be another Kerenskyl" Indeed, those words,when applied to his Legionary collaborators, represented the General'sintentions very accurately .

Two conditions were to be fulfilled before he could consider himselfable to carry out those intentions : the securing of the army's coopera-tion, and Berlin's consent . He took care of the first by certain appropri-ate changes in the corps and divisions command and by canceling witha stroke of the pen all the debts of officers, of every grade, contracted attheir special bank of credit, one of the two State institutions functioningfor all the State officials, civilian and military. The salaries of State em-ployees in Rumania were so shamefully low that canceling all existing

Antonescu's Putsch / 213indebtedness would have been considered by many an act of justice . Can-celing only those of the military men was quite a different thing .Antonescu's maneuvering to win over Hitler to the idea of liquidating

the Iron Guard started while we were in Berlin . Hitler and Ribbentrophad felt it necessary to mention something about it to me ; but the Gen-eral's activities were substantially cramped in Berlin by the presence ofso many Legionaries . Hitler's final consent was won in Berchtesgaden,where thanks to the Fabricius-Antonescu maneuvers nobody was aroundto challenge the General's deceitful accusations. When Hitler informedhim of his final decision to attack Soviet Russia and of the date he hadchosen for the start of this new military operation, Antonescu objectedon the ground that he could not guarantee Rumania's full cooperationuntil he had taken radical measures against "the revolutionary spirit ofthe Legionary Movement." What all the arguments were that the Gen-eral employed to convince Hitler we cannot know ; but the Ghyka andGroza episodes, which will be related later, are proofs that in suchcircumstances Antonescu did not hesitate at any imposture or even atcrime .

Indeed, it was a crime against his country's most sacred interests, toassert to Hitler-contrary to all that he knew of the spirit of sacrificeand patriotism of the Iron Guard-that the behavior of the Legionariesin case of war could have jeopardized Rumania's contribution to thecommon effort. Antonescu knew very well that this was a lie, that in theevent of a war with Soviet Russia he would have seen the Legionaries,the majority of his Ministers included, in the first row of the battle, andmodels of discipline, endurance, and courage . The General lied to Hitleron that fateful day with the same imperturbability with which I hadheard him lie in many minor circumstances. Antonescu's behavior inBerchtesgaden proved once more that his patriotism was a subordinateaspect of his ambition, rather than his ambition a subordinate aspect ofhis patriotism. The country had a chance with him only when both pas-sions could be satisfied simultaneously .This distinction explains General Antonescu's "collaborating" with

the Movement while trying to annihilate it, and it explains why, duringthe victorious part of the war in Russia, he uselessly immolated 70,000Rumanians in a frontal attack against Odessa : the Germans in theircommunique had wisely taken the precaution of stressing that the battleof Odessa was strictly Antonescu's battle. Odessa would have fallen inany case through regular maneuvers, just as Hango was falling in Fin-land at the same time and under identical circumstances. It wasthis same vacuum in the General's soul that did not permit him to findthe spiritual wings to lift him above the first reverses, but forced him to

214 / The Suicide of Europeabandon into the hands of political cretins, weaklings, and traitors theauthority that could still have been his .Back from Berchtesgaden in January 1941, the General, assured of

Hitler's approval of his intended Putsch, got rid of his Minister of theInterior, General Petrovicescu, a hero of World War I . Petrovicescu wasa hard-working soldier whose only fault had been that seven years pre-viously he, as State's Attorney, had presented an honest case to the mili-tary court before which Codreanu had been arraigned . For the operationagainst Petrovicescu a handy pretext presented itself with the assassina-tion of a German officer in the streets of Bucharest by a drunken or de-ranged Greek citizen. This permitted Antonescu to accuse his Ministerof the Interior of negligence . How it happened that this assassinationoccurred at just the right moment only Eugeniu Christescu might haveknown. Christescu-a few years later a staunch pillar of the CommunistRumanian Government-was the head of the General's personal securityservice, which was independent of the state's security service, the latterthen headed by Alexandru Ghyka, a friend and distant relative of thiswriter, who was dismissed along with General Petrovicescu .Antonescu's dismissal of Petrovicescu, Ghyka, and this writer was an

open violation of the agreement that had brought him to power . Theagreement stipulated that these three Ministries belonged to the Legion-ary Movement. There followed a convocation of all the district prefectsin Bucharest, a measure that, along with other ominous signs, greatlyalarmed the Legionary ranks . No one had forgotten that under Carol thereplacement of civilian prefects with military ones had been a prelimi-nary to the great slaughter, and everybody had the impression that somenew foul play was afoot . The general restlessness manifested itself in abig Legionary demonstration, which was carried on in an orderly way,proclaiming anew the fidelity of the Movement to the General but voic-ing also the Legionaries' anxieties .

The Legionaries did not have to wait long to see how well-foundedwere their worries . The night of the demonstration, January 20-21, theGeneral ordered the army to take control of all the district prefecturesand police headquarters . Throughout the whole country the Legionaries,who had not received any orders either from the administrative authori-ties or from the Movement's hierarchy, resisted the Putsch and refusedto evacuate their legally occupied stations . They resisted because thatwas the natural reaction of a heroic and disciplined organization ; theyresisted because everybody understood that this was the beginning ofnew persecutions, imprisonments, and assassinations .

In Iasi, the capital of Moldavia, where my son was the local Legionaryleader and where General Coroama commanded an army corps, order andtranquility were assured by the collaboration of the army and the Move-

Antonescu's Putsch / 215

ment. The same situation existed in most of the country. If Antonescuhad warned his Vice President and the other Legionary members in hisGovernment of his intentions, violence could have been avoided .This was not, however, what the General wanted . He hoped to dem-

onstrate to the Germans that the Legionary Movement was a disorderlyand dangerous faction. Consequently in Bucharest and Ploesti, whichwere directly under the General's control, Legionary blood was immedi-ately shed. In Bucharest two tanks appeared before the police headquar-ters and immediately opened fire, killing two Legionaries . The Legion-ary guard seized the tanks, caught their crews, officers and men, and sentthem away unharmed . They then set the two tanks in position, so as todefend the police headquarters from further attacks . In less than an hourall the Legionary-occupied positions in the capital were in a state ofsiege. The Legionaries barricaded themselves in those State institutionsthat they occupied legally and that no authorized person had orderedthem to abandon .I joined my comrades at the district prefecture, where my wife and

other ladies brought the necessary provisions for a siege of unknown du-ration. Now and then I went to chat with my comrades at the policeheadquarters, another Legionary stronghold, in front of which reposedthe two captured tanks, manned by sleepy Legionaries . From the towerof the telephone building, the highest building in Bucharest, where theGeneral had wrongly placed a couple of machine guns that ought tohave been fired from the basement, the tanks were fired at without ap-preciable success. The Legionary-controlled tanks did not answer . More-over, during the three days of the Movement's resistance no Rumaniansoldier was killed or wounded. The Legionaries always fired over theirheads. The massacre of civilians and Legionaries occurred afterwards,when disarmed citizens were victims, once more, of foul play and be-trayal .

During the night of January 22-23 we received a perplexing call fromthe Legionary "nest" known as Ion-Voda . Two trucks loaded with whatappeared to be prisoners and their guards, had passed before the Ion-Voda position . The Legionaries tried to stop them, but they were firedon and the trucks broke through . They asked Ion Popa, the Prefect whowas taking the call, what his orders were . The orders were to follow, toinvestigate and to arrest. Half an hour later we were informed that ina field not far from the city limits about sixty corpses were found, all ofthem from the Jewish suburbs of Bucharest. With them were a fewwounded men . What were the orders? The orders, transmitted and exe-cuted immediately, were to transport the wounded men at once to thenearest hospital and to stop at any price all other trucks passing thesame way .

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We do not know to this day for sure who the culprits were . In his bookUn Chapitre d'Histoire Roumaine this is what General Chirnoaga tellsabout this cowardly massacre :

The Legionaries were immediately blamed for it ; but one never knewwho the real culprits were. The Government that replaced the NationalLegionary Government, and the Jewish Bucharest Community, appliedthemselves to careful investigations, but nothing came of them . This is al-most certain proof that the Legionary Movement was not implicated, other-wise the culprits would have been quickly discovered . So, in the end it wasmore desirable to leave uncertainty and suspicion alive .

It is useless to remember that the number of victims was quickly mul-tiplied by ten, then once more by ten, and reached eight thousand insome postwar reports, which included the story-also used five years be-fore against Franco's troops in Badajoz-of human flesh sold at butchershops.'

We can easily imagine who were the criminals . Paid provocateurs hadinfiltrated our ranks from the moment of the Legionary victory to thetime, perhaps too late, that we stopped new enlistments . We also knowwho was directing their activities : those shadowy individuals who servedwith the same diligence the Carol and Antonescu Governments andfinally the Communist regime, to which they had probably always be-longed. Three hundred unarmed civilians and Legionaries (a figuregiven by Antonescu's information service) were mowed down in thestreets of Bucharest by the General's machine guns after the cease-fireagreement, when everybody had reason to think that peace had beenre-established in the capital. No one mentions those three hundred inno-cent victims of Antonescu's madness, but the corpses of the sixty unfor-tunate Jews-a figure that, as we mentioned, has gradually reached thatof eight thousand under the pen of some enthusiastic anti-Legionary"historians"-are and will continue to be paraded in every almanac forcenturies to come .

' It is interesting to note that such accusations came, after all, from the side ofthose who not only allowed the slaughtered corpses of Mussolini and the young girlwho shared his fate to be hanged by the feet like pork in a butcher shop-andthis time there is a widely published photograph that vouches for the authenticity ofthe fact-but made the executioner a member for life of the Italian Senate.

CHAPTER

XXVIII

Fooled Again

The second night of Antonescu's Putsch I was visiting at thepolice headquarters when a German officer presented himself with a mes-sage for Horia Sima from General Hansen, the commanding officer ofthe German military mission . With this officer and with Dr. Victor Biris,another Legionary, we left immediately for Sima's hideout . General Han-sen's message read : "Important events are in preparation in this part ofEurope which ask for order and tranquility in Rumania. The Fiihrerappeals to the patriotism of the Legionary Movement and asks that thedisorders be stopped . General Antonescu has promised that there will beno measures taken against any Legionary if the Movement's resistanceceases immediately ."

Horia Sima, fearing with very good reason new treachery, asked thatthe German Charge d'Affaires, Dr . Hermann Neubacher, be present toconfirm both the message and the promise . Fabricius, his mission accom-plished, had left Bucharest to the tune of machine gun and artillery mu-sic; Manfred von Killinger, the new Envoy, had not yet presented hiscredentials; this left Neubacher provisionally in charge . Neubacher ap-peared promptly, confirmed Hitler's appeal and Antonescu's promisesbacked by Hitler's assurances . Sima pointed out to him that it had notbeen the Movement but Antonescu who started the fighting ; Sima wasready to order the end of the Legionary resistance, but for the sake ofhis followers' security he could not ask them to put down their weaponsbefore having reached a written and precise arrangement with the Gen-eral . This arrangement should also cover the attitude of the Germantroops, as it was more or less an ultimatum that General Hansen hadsent Sima.

Neubacher and Minister Vasile Iasinschi, chosen for his firmness andhis talent as a negotiator, went to see the General . They came back with

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the conditions of the cease-fire scribbled on a piece of paper . The condi-tions were agreed upon by both parties, and the attitude of Germantroops present in the capital was guaranteed by the German representa-tive. The Legionary Movement pledged itself to cease all resistance byeleven o'clock that morning, a delay necessary for transmitting the ordersto the rest of the country . The General pledged himself not to take anymeasures against the Movement and not to prosecute or molest any of itsmembers for the recent happenings . As Sima mentioned the possibilityof ordering the Movement out of any political activity, Neubacher pro-tested: "We need you, especially in the present circumstances ." W e wereeven informed that in the discussion with the General various govern-ment formations with Legionary collaboration had been considered .

Without losing a minute, all the necessary measures were taken to in-form the provinces of the cease-fire . In Bucharest it was this writer andBiris who made the rounds of all the Legionary positions and saw to itthat they were evacuated without delay . Complete evacuation was ful-filled in Bucharest before eight o'clock, three hours in advance of theagreed time .This done, tired and hungry, I went home for a bath, breakfast, and

some rest. I did not get the rest-at least not immediately . About nineo'clock we had a visit from Alexandru Randa accompanied by one ofthe secretaries of the German Legation, whose name I have forgotten .We were commenting about the recent deplorable events when suddenlywe heard new machine-gun bedlam coming from the direction of thetelephone building. Leaving my guests I hastened into the Calea Vic-toriei and arrived in front of the Royal Palace in time to see two Germanmotorized howitzers arriving at full speed and preparing for action . Ru-manian troops were barring the street . I asked a young officer exactlywhat was the trouble and received this reply: "What could it be butGeneral Antonescu shooting at Legionaries againl"

I could not understand the situation . In the direction toward whichAntonescu's machine guns were firing, from the telephone building east-ward along the Calea Victoriei, there had been no other center of resist-ance than the district prefecture and the police headquarters, the evacu-ation of which I had myself overseen . To increase my perplexity anothermachine gun suddenly started shooting at the other extremity of theCalea Victoriei, from the direction of the Presidential Palace, Antones-cu's residence. I reached the central office of our organization, where Ifound half a dozen comrades as dumbfounded as I . We could not under-stand at whom Antonescu was shooting .

Among the crowd I saw in the street, a typical crowd of loafers andbystanders, there may have been some Legionaries, but so few that I wasnot able to identify any . It was this harmless public that would pay,

Fooled Again / 219

with more than three hundred killed and about a thousand wounded,for Antonescu's last stratagem to demonstrate to Hitler that despite allhis efforts no arrangement had been possible with the Iron Guard .

I found my German guest still at my home and reminded him of theFizhrer's and General Hansen's pledge concerning the attitude of theGerman troops . I expressed my amazement at the participation of thosetroops in this unbelievable act of betrayal . "In the end you will lose allyour friends'" I told him . With irony and sadness he answered : Wirbrauchen keine Freunde, wir haben Panzerdivisionen ("We need nofriends; we have the Panzer divisions") .

The Iron Guard had been fooled once more ; but this time the Move-ment was neither the only nor the principal victim . Few have realizedthat it was the Antonescu Putsch and the ease with which National So-cialist Germany had once more, as she had in Slovakia and Hungary,allowed and even helped the suppression of a Nationalist Movement(the only type of movement that guaranteed a fight to the last man inthe event of a war with Soviet Russia) that had deprived Prince Pauland his Nationalist Government in Yugoslavia of their prestige and au-thority, and had permitted the triumph of the Simovic-Donovan-Tarta-ruga foreign conspiracy .' It was the Simovic conspiracy and the necessityof preventing an Italian disaster that provoked the otherwise absolutelyunexpected conflict between Germany and Yugoslavia and finally forcedGermany to send more than forty divisions and her crack parachutetroops across the Danube and as far as Crete-divisions and troops thatwould very likely have secured the fall of Moscow before the beginningof winter, as Hitler fully expected .

It seemed very important, not only for us but for the country, to in-form the new German Envoy of the Movement's sincere desire to main-

1 In March 1941, Yugoslavia under the regency of Prince Paul, and with Drafa Svet-covic as Prime Minister, also adhered to the Tripartite Pact (Germany-Italy-Japan)as Hungary, Rumania, and Slovakia had done . The Yugoslav statesmen did it, prin-cipally, in order to safeguard their country, threatened by Italy's unjustifiable ambi-tions and intrigues concerning Croatia . Two days after the signing of the TripartitePact a military conspiracy, led by a certain Colonel Dusan Simovic, overthrew theSvetcovic Government, drove Prince Paul out of the country and replaced him by thechild-King Peter, whom Roosevelt-in an appropriate broadcast-proclaimed to bethe future Peter the Great . The conspiracy had been engineered by foreign agentsunder the clever direction of, then Major Donovan, an American citizen in the serviceof the British. Crowds joined the conspiracy instigated by Communist agents . ColonelSimovic (who promoted himself to General) has disappeared from further Yugoslavhistory, as has Marshal Smigly-Rydz disappeared from the history of Poland, afterhaving thrown his country into an irretrievable disaster . King Peter of Yugoslavia hasbeen seen lately at festivities masquerading in his royal mantle and crown . This is whatwe find in Who Was Who in the United States about William Joseph Donovan :

. . advanced to the rank of Colonel, wounded three times, unofficial observer forGreat Britain's Secretary of Navy July-August 1940, and South-East Europe, Decem-ber 1940-May 1941 ."

220 / The Suicide o f Europetain order and unity among the Rumanian people at the price of what-ever sacrifice from our side on the eve of the important events that wereabout to come . Therefore Alexandru Randa, who had already madecontact with Killinger, arranged a meeting for me with Fabricius's suc-cessor that same afternoon at the Italian Legation . I spent the hoursprior to the meeting in a friend's home to avoid a possible prematurearrest, which would have prevented me from keeping this rendezvous .Imprudently, however, I decided to pay a short visit to my sister's . Hardlywere we seated for our afternoon tea when the house was overrun by adozen plainclothes detectives commanded by an army captain who de-clared me under arrest . We invited him to join us at the table, an invi-tation he declined, but he very courteously allowed us to continue themeal.

I was entrusted to two mamelukes, one of whom I recognized withouttoo much surprise as the detective who had been assigned for my per-sonal protection when I took possession of my office and whom I had im-mediately dismissed for reasons of principle and because of his homicidalcountenance .

I was taken to the Malmaison military prison, where I was placed ina cell about seven by five feet in size with two bunks, one above theother. Exhausted by three active days and two sleepless nights, I imme-diately lay down, faced the wall, and fell into a deep slumber . Aboutthree o'clock in the morning I was awakened by somebody shaking myshoulder. Another inmate, I thought, and grumbled some protest . Thisdid not seem to satisfy the newcomer, who kept on shaking me . Com-pletely awake now, I realized that the "intruder" was my wife . Her to-tally unmotivated arrest was in perfect accord with Antonescu's innatevulgarity. He had my wife imprisoned for five months in a militaryprison where there were only males as guards and inmates. I must im-mediately add that everybody, from the prison commandant to the lastsoldier, behaved with such courtesy and good breeding that my wife wasprobably much better off there than she would have been in a women'sprison .

There is one possible excuse for Antonescu's unusual behavior : I be-lieve that in the weeks that preceded and followed the beginning of thewar in Russia he passed through a severe mental crisis bordering onactual insanity. This explains to some extent the imprisoning of thou-sands of persons without any detectable motive, the shooting and killingof hundreds of innocent passersby, the shelling of factory gates insteadof asking the gatekeepers to open them, the murdering of one morebrother of Corneliu Codreanu, the machine-gunning of the attendants atthis brother's funeral ceremony, and so on . I believe also that the siegeand conquest of Odessa in the manner in which this operation was car-

Fooled Again / 221ried out under the General's supervision was a direct result of Antones-cu's paranoia .

The next day the prison started to fill up with former and presentMinisters and high officials of the National Legionary Government,among whom were General Petrovicescu, the former Minister of Inte-rior; and Alexandru Ghyka, Chief of State Security . I spent about sixmonths in prison, which is nothing compared to the ordeal of some ofmy comrades who were moved from Antonescu's cells to those of KingMichael and then to those of the Communist regime, where many diedand where hundreds of others, like Alexandru Ghyka, still remain at thevery moment I am writing these lines . I hope that none of my readerswill ever have the same experience . But just in case, let me give somefriendly advice : if you are ever incarcerated, consider that it will last for-ever and adjust yourself mentally to such an eventuality . Falling into astate of claustrophobia and expecting at any second a miracle that willopen the door of your cell or the gates of your prison will quickly finishyou physically and mentally and will not hasten by an instant the mo-ment of your liberation .

This philosophy was so much the easier to apply as our guardians, allof them military people and not political stooges, behaved with the in-stinctive humanity and intelligent generosity that is characteristic ofthose of our people who are direct products of Rumanian villages andRumanian soil, and who have not been degraded by contact with cor-rupt and denationalized authorities and politicians . Thanks to the prisonpersonnel, our contacts with the outside world were never completelysevered, and we had news from comrades and kin in other prisons .Through them we heard that our son was alive, but that he had beenpursued, found, and arrested . From his cell in Jilava, as he told us after-wards, he heard the defiant songs of six of his comrades who were exe-cuted in the prison yard .At night, when the civilian police who guarded the prison walls dur-

ing the day had left the premises, our doors were unlocked for ournightly get-togethers, the chief attraction of which was the humorousrhymed journal read aloud by our beloved poet Radu Gyr . Sometimeswe laughed so loud that the night officer, a constant bystander, had towarn us to quiet down lest the outer guards would think we were riot-ing. The poems that Radu Gyr read to us were not always on the comicside. Some of us, those whose children had been submitted to so manyordeals and torments, had tears in our eyes when we heard for the firsttime "You have robbed us of our youthl "-an immortal slap in the facefor all the torturers, kings or knaves, of a heroic and unlucky generation .

The newspapers informed us daily about the deceitful and insanelypersistent maneuvers by which the General tried to accredit his version

222 / The Suicide o f Europeof the latest events and discredit the Legionary Movement, in the eyesof the Germans, as a possible partner in a war against Soviet Russia . Allthis took place during circumstances in which all his efforts should havebeen to bring about a concurrence of feeling and action among the Ru-manian people. With consternation we read in the German papers a com-munication of Ribbentrop to the press to the effect that Groza, one ofthe Legionary leaders, had recently paid a visit to Moscow . There was aGroza among the Legionary leaders who was at that very moment a refu-gee in Germany, but everybody knew, and certainly Baron Killinger knew,that the Groza who had paid a visit to Moscow was not our Groza but aformer Minister in a National Peasant Government, the same individualwhom Vyshinsky forced King Michael to accept four years later as thefirst Communist Prime Minister of Rumania . 2

At the time of Ribbentrop's declaration, Killinger announced to theGerman minority in Transylvania that "the Legionary Movement hadcommitted suicide and therefore did not exist any more ." I had been ableto keep in written contact with Killinger all during my six months inthe military prison ; so I tried to make him understand that suicide im-plied initiative and death of the subject, and that we were still alive andhad not taken any initiative in the last events . Little did I know, andKillinger very likely still less, that suicide would be the way he wouldchoose to expiate his part of the responsibility for the fraud whose vic-tims were not only the Iron Guard but also Rumania and his owncountry .After about six months of imprisonment we were finally taken before

one of those routine kangaroo courts . A somewhat refined procedurehad been developed by first bringing to trial thousands of Legionariesfrom the ranks and sentencing them for a rebellion that had never oc-curred. Our cases, since we were their chiefs, could not, therefore, prom-ise any surprises, and except for the obvious similarity to proceedings inCarol's courts, did not present any interest .For the record, however, here are some of the facts :Among other charges we were accused of having clandestinely intro-

duced twenty-five submachine guns from Germany . I asked the State's At-torney, Colonel Pion, if those twenty-five submachine guns were identical

2 Among the biggest impostures of the Antonescu team was that of a list of allegedLegionary misdeeds, published in Pe Margina Prapastei, a book that appeared whenwe all were in Antonescu's prisons or muzzled in Germany . Hans Rogger and EugenWeber chose this book as the main source of information for their own book, TheEuropean Right. The phoniness of the whole list was demonstrated by the fact thatamong the thousands of cases that were brought against the Legionaries after Anto-nescu's Putsch, none concerned those alleged misdeeds. Indeed, none could have beensubstantiated by the State's Attorney any better than was the false accusation relatingto the clandestine introduction of submachine guns, or the accusation of "high trea-son" brought against Alexandru Ghyka.

General Ion Antonescu, de facto Chief of State of Rumania during World War II .

UPI Photo

King Michael I of Rumania .

UPI Photo

Reichsfiihrer Heinrich Himmler .

Martin Bormann .

UPI Photo UPI Photo

Yalta - gravediggers and morticians : Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt,Joseph Stalin. Back row, left to right : Lord Leathers, Anthony Eden, EdwardStettinius, Alexander Cadogan, Vyacheslav Molotov, and Averell Harriman .

UPI Pi

Nurnberg. Left to right, front row : Reichsmarschall Hermann Goring, Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, Gen-eralfeldmarschall Wilhelm Keitel, and Alfred Rosenberg . Back row: Grossadmiral Karl Donitz, Admiral Erich Raeder,Baldur Schirach, Fritz Sauckel, and Generaloberst Alfred Jodl . Rudolf Hess, who usually sat next to Goring, is absent .

UPI Photo

Reichsmarschall Hermann Goring in his cell at Mirnberg .

UPI Photo

Rev. Richard Wurmbrand, stripped to the waist before a Senate judiciary subcommittee,shows the scars he received in a Communist Rumanian prison .

The Monastery of Voronel, built by Stcfan the Great .

Fooled Again 223

to those that Mme . Antonescu, General Antonescu's wife, had distributedwith her own hands at a public ceremony to twenty-five Legionaries whoformed her husband's personal guard . The Colonel answered affirma-tively. I asked him if it were not true that neither those weapons northose twenty-five Legionaries had played any part in the recent events .The Colonel answered affirmatively again . When I asked how, in suchcircumstances, it could be pretended that those weapons had been clan-destinely introduced into the country, I was reminded that we were thereto answer, not to ask questions.

One of the accused, an Undersecretary of State at the Ministry of Pub-lic Works, was indicted for having bought one gallon of aviation fuel ;the absurd claim was made that this fuel could only have been purchasedwith pyromaniacal intentions .

But the most shameful case of all was that of Alexandru Ghyka, Chiefof State Security. Codreanu had once reproduced in a public declarationfrom the columns of various newspapers an order to the local gendarme-rie forbidding the Legionaries access to voting places . On this basis hehad been accused of high treason and sentenced accordingly . As Chief ofState Security Alexandru Ghyka, descendant of a long line of reigningprinces of Moldavia and Walachia, had, among other responsibilities,the problem of security for the German officers, members of the Germanmilitary mission, a rather important part of his duty as was demonstratedby the assassination of a German officer on the streets of Bucharest. Hehad, consequently, dispatched instructions to all the country's prefects tokeep him informed about the presence of German military personnel intheir territory. Ghyka would have been derelict in his duties if he hadnot taken that or similar precautions . Using with imperturbable cyni-cism the very same trick that Carol had used to secure Codreanu's con-demnation, Antonescu asked that on the grounds of Ghyka's orders tothe prefects, Ghyka be found guilty of high treason .

If Ghyka had indeed collected such information in order to communi-cate it to an enemy, this enemy could have been only the Soviets . Hereagain, as in the Groza case, Antonescu was evidently trying to convincethe Germans that there were guilty relations between the Movement andthe Kremlin. This was insane, for no one who knew the facts could be-lieve it either of Ghyka or the Movement .

On closing his case against us, Colonel Pion, the Attorney for the Stateand the only more or less honorable figure among the gorillas Antonescuhad chosen for this pet case of his, expressed himself as follows : "Con-cerning the accusation of high treason against Alexandru Ghyka, it isimpossible for me to support it; I know too well his patriotism and thatof the Movement to which he belongs ."

Ghyka's lawyers thanked the State's Attorney for this outburst of un-

224 / The Suicide of Europe

expected sincerity and did not worry further about this stupid attemptof the insane General .

The court's decision was read to us in our cells : Ghyka had beenfound guilty of high treason and sentenced to twenty-five years at hardlabor .

Ghyka is still in prison as these lines are written . After Antonescu'sfall, none of the successive governments included Ghyka and his Legion-ary cellmates in the lists of political prisoners who were to be liberated-lists that included all the available Communists and traitors .

From Carol's cells to Antonescu's ; from Antonescu's to Michael's ; fromMichael's to the Communists' . What was the common infamous factoramong all these regimes? Is it possible that all of them were clandestinelyand conspiratorially based on a Communist substratum? And if this isthe case, would it not be worthwhile for every patriotic individual ororganization in every country to look around with worried and insistentattention?

CHAPTER

XXIX

Too Late, Gentlemen l

I was sentenced to five years in jail for participating in theso-called Legionary Rebellion . From the Malmaison prison I was takento Jilava, where I parted from my wife, who had been discharged, andwhere I found my son, who had been sentenced to seven years at hardlabor. From Jilava we were sent after a few days with a whole trainloadof political and criminal convicts to the Lugoj prison in Transylvania .To the warden of that new jail, whose name I have regretfully forgot-ten, I dedicate here a few grateful thoughts . He did everything he couldto indicate the admiration and affection he had for the Movement . Iwas moved from a small cell to a spacious room where my comradescould gather daily, and where those who were natives from that prov-ince supplied me with many of the victuals they received from theirfamilies: homemade bread, ham, sausages, cheeses .We asked for and received permission to arise an hour earlier than

the regulation time to attend Mass in the prison chapel, served by oneof our clerical comrades . Before leaving we always sang the hymn, cher-ished by Legionaries, "God Abide with Us ." In other prisons the sing-ing of this hymn was considered and treated as the beginning of a re-bellion. Often we saw some of the non-political prisoners furtively joinour group, kneeling and singing with us . One of them, Filip, a peasantfrom the Moldavian highlands who had been assigned to me by thethoughtful warden as an orderly, was a man of no ordinary appearanceand bearing and had an intelligent and noble nature . I had long talkswith him; he had killed someone fifteen years previously in some ob-scure circumstances, but he could have given lessons in patience, truth,and Christian behavior to many of the leaders of the Carol and Anto-nescu era .

It was in the Lugoj prison that we received the news we had been225

226 / The Suicide o f Europe

awaiting with such impatience : Rumania's general mobilization anddeclaration of war against Soviet Russia . On behalf and in the name ofall my comrades I immediately sent the following telegram to Antonescu :"All the Legionaries of the Lugoj prison await the orders of the Com-mander-in-Chief. God bless our armies." During the twenty-four hoursthat passed before we received the General's answer we were convincedit would be the one we wanted . We knew that thousands of imprisonedLegionaries had sent identical messages, and our optimism was based onthe assumption that Antonescu would be more than willing to formspecial battalions with the hated Legionaries and send them into thehottest center of the fracas, which would have been all right with us .

However, we were mistaken . Antonescu's answer to our telegram wasone that only a maniac could have composed : "Too late, gentlemenl"Antonescu's plans concerning the war and the Legionaries were alreadyformed: they were to be sent much later into battle in disciplinary bat-talions along with felons and other criminals .

Two weeks later, at the German Legation in Sofia, Bulgaria, I wasinformed that Hitler had insistently asked that the Legionaries beliberated and sent to the front, and that Antonescu had promised totake steps to that effect . Here again we could witness not only anotherof Antonescu's tricks, but also the complacency with which Germanauthorities in Bucharest and Berlin let themselves be fooled . The "lib-eration" that followed Hitler's demand and that freed me was so limitedthat of the more than two hundred Legionary inmates in Lugoj onlytwo were permitted to leave with me . Also, measures were immediatelytaken to prevent all of the liberated ones from reaching the battle lines.At no moment did Antonescu abandon the fixed idea that had domi-nated his activity throughout this decisive period : to separate completelythe Legionary Movement, Codreanu's Movement, from the war of re-conquest, which must be his war alone.

Only those Legionaries who had been sentenced to terms of five yearsor less were freed. There were about twenty of them in all among thethousands who filled the prisons . Some of the conditions of our libera-tion were written in the corresponding decree ; others I discovered onlyafter my return to Bucharest . We had to present ourselves in person eachweek at the nearest police precinct ; we were allowed no political orpress activity and no contact with foreign persons under the penalty ofbeing sent back to prison for the rest of our term or more .

My last order of mobilization as a Reserve Captain, which I had re-ceived two years before, had assigned me to my old World War I unit,the First Artillery Group of the First Cavalry Division . I decided to con-form to this order just as if it had been the recent order of mobilizationreceived by all other reserve officers . I donned my uniform and pre-

Too Late, Gentlemen! / 227

sented myself to the garrison command office . By chance I found thereCaptain Tomita, whom I had known as a youth in Targu-Ocna, townof my childhood. He told me that none of the liberated Legionaries hadbeen or would be, mobilized, and that my being caught in uniformmight expose me to arrest, which meant of course being sent back toprison .

Knowing from past experience how easy it was for unit commandersin the combat zone to arrange their order of battle as they pleased, Iasked Tomita if for the sake of old times he could not make just onemistake and give me a waybill to where my division was supposed to beand let me arrange the rest with my chiefs there . After pondering for awhile, Tomita told me that it would be too risky for him and stronglyadvised me to change to muftis as promptly as possible .That evening we went with my wife to see Mrs. Ionica, the widow

of Professor Ionica, who had been executed during Carol's regime . Whilewe were there some police rabble invaded her home and searched it,pretending that flashes of light, which could have been meant to directenemy aircraft, had been seen coming from the roof of her house . Havingcarried out their mission of intimidation and persecution, they left assuddenly as they had come . Some German officers who also were guestsof Mrs. Ionica expressed very aptly the general feeling : "Die Schweinel"

My decision was made very quickly : I would leave the country beforethe first weekly appointment with the police. I would do my best toreach Finland, to which I had been Rumanian Envoy for many years .I felt sure that Marshal Mannerheim, an old acquaintance, would con-sent to my enlistment in the Finnish Army .

During the last days of the so-called rebellion, before my arrest, theGermans had offered to get me safely out of Rumania. I had declinedwith thanks, since, at that time, I preferred to stay in Rumania even asa prisoner. I could still have availed myself of this offer in those newcircumstances, but I did not do so because of what I had heard about theway those comrades of mine who were in Germany were treated . I pre-ferred not to owe my escape to anybody ; I bought it .

A magic moonlit night, shared with my wife from the balcony of ourhome, was the last I spent in Rumania. I departed, leaving in one ofAntonescu's prisons my son, whom I would meet again years later, undercircumstances that proved once again that life is often more unpredict-able than fiction .

From Bucharest to Giurgiu on the Danube I traveled in the trunk ofa small car. When I complained to the professional who was helping meescape that the trunk was too small, he assured me that a few days previ-ously two fugitives of almost my size had traveled together in the sametrunk in full comfort.

228 / The Suicide of Europe

With my head on a cushion I slept until I was awakened by the noiseof our crossing the pontoon bridge that our engineers had thrown overthe Danube for the German Armies . I had crossed this river twenty-eightyears before, during the Balkan War, also on a pontoon bridge . But itwas under much more dignified circumstances : I was on my beautifulblack stallion Hades, with my artillery regiment .

In Rusciuc, Bulgaria, on the other side, I found Gheorghe Caraianiwaiting for me . He was the youngest of the Legionaries and had beensent by my comrades who were already in Sofia . The sun was setting;through the light evening mist that drifted along the river we threw alast longing look toward our beloved country, which neither he nor Ihave seen again.

PART FIVE

Michael :The Puppet King

A few days ago Maniu told Le Rougetel, my Brit-ish colleague, that if the British Government wishedthat Rumania cast her lot with the Soviets ratherthan with the Anglo-Saxon powers, in case a decisionbecomes necessary, he would quite understand theposition but he would be grateful to receive an in-dication to that effect . . . .

Last evening with me Maniu developed more fullythe same thought . He said if he had known the Sovi-ets were to be given a free hand in application ofarmistice terms he would not have advised the Kingto sign the armistice . He argued that his pressure andthe Rumanian action which resulted from it had ac-tually advanced the Focsani-Galatz line, which mighthave been held a long time, to the very gates ofBudapest .

. . . He was convinced at that time that the demo-cratic powers would preserve an independent andsovereign Rumania . Everything today however indi-cated that this was not the intention of those powers .On the contrary it appeared that Soviet Russia wasdeliberately planning to communize Rumania whilethe democratic powers silently watched . . . .

With considerable emotion Maniu asked if Americaand Great Britain wished Rumania to become a partof the Soviet Union . "If so, please advise me ac-cordingly for this can be arranged and even today

late as it is I can arrange it to the better advantageto Rumania than can the Rumanian Communists ."[Roman added .]

Burton Y. BERRYForeign Relations of the United StatesDiplomatic Papers, 1944, Volume IV.Europe . Page 279. The American Rep-resentative in Rumania (Berry) to theSecretary of State. Bucharest, Decem-ber 9, 1944-7 p .m.You will be present at the conference [Yalta] . Youshould trust us. Great Britain has entered this con-flict to defend your independence; I can assure youthat I will never forsake your country . . . . I knowthat Germany and Russia have destroyed your bestelements, particularly your intellectual class . I sympa-thize most deeply with your suffering . But remainconfident; we will not forsake you, and Poland willbe saved.

Winston CHURCHILLTo General Anders before the campaignin Italy, when the cooperation of thePolish divisions was essential, as re-ported in General Anders' memoirs .We have never guaranteed Poland's eastern borders .We possess now sufficient troops ourselves, and we donot need your cooperation any more . You may with-draw your divisions; we will do without them .

Winston CHURCHILLAfter Anzio and Yalta, as reported inGeneral Anders' memoirs .You can have them . But let us not disclose this un-derstanding before the next Presidential election inthe United States . We have in the United States mil-lions of Poles, Lithuanians, Estonians, etc . . . . andas a practical man I would not like to lose theirvotes .

Franklin D. ROOSEVELTTo Stalin at Teheran in December1943, as revealed in U .S. State Depart-ment publications .

CHAPTER

XXX

Falsehood, the Scoundrels' Weapon

Neither murder, torture, nor imprisonment, but slander andfalsehood were the ugliest of the weapons used against the LegionaryMovement. Against violence and injustice the Legionaries pitted theirfortitude, and they never lost faith in final Divine justice . But whatcould they do to oppose the calumnies and impostures that were propa-gated by practically all newspapers and magazines, almanacs, calendars,encyclopedias, dictionaries, and "history" books-in fact by nearly allthe mass media of communications.

The methods used by the slanderers of the Legion were, and are gen-erally based on the principle of reversal-in other words, the repetitionof the Big Lie, which has proved to be the most effective weapon withthe gullible public . The following are some examples of the slanderouscharges used to discredit the Movement .

The Movement is a terrorist organization . It is the Movement thathas been, without interruption from its foundation and up to now, thevictim of the most cruel terror by all successive Rumanian Governments,from the most "conservative" to the Communist Government of todaywith its special concentration camps for the extermination of Legion-aries, described by Leonard Krishner in his book Prisoner of Red Justice .

The Movement has been a permanent menace to the State . Among allthe political groups and parties that aspired only to power and its ma-terial benefits, the Movement was the only defender of the State againstcorruption, usurpation, treason, and finally against the surrender of theState itself to Communist domination .

The Movement is an enemy of legality . The Movement's history is thatof a long fight for legality. It never asked for more than the benefit of itslegal and natural rights, benefits that were denied to it by every Ruma-nian Government without exception .

231

232 / The Suicide of Europe

The Movement's activities were controlled by foreign influences . Thehistory of the Movement is, actually, that of a long, arduous and perilousfight against anti-national influences . It never looked for endorsement inParis, London, Moscow, Rome, or Berlin . It was not at any time pre-pared to open the country to Soviet forces simply because that waswhat Eduard Benes, Leon Blum, the leftist French politicians and theinternational mafia were demanding . It was the Legion's adversarieswho carried out Blum's and the mafia's orders to annihilate by terror,imprisonment, and murder those of our youth who reacted against cor-ruption and treason . And finally, the Legionary Movement was the onlypolitical group in Rumania to urge that the Vienna Arbitration be re-sisted with arms in hand . This meant war not only against Hungarybut also against Germany and Italy . The Legionary Movement wasnever guilty of yielding whole provinces to Rumania's neighbors with-out a fight .

We will not stoop to refute the insinuations made regarding the per-sonal correctitude of the Legionary leaders, but we will show how farthe professional dishonesty of certain publicists could go when writingabout the Legion . I relate two characteristic episodes with which I havebeen directly acquainted .Jerome Tharaud, one of the authors of the famous book Quand Israel

Est Roi, which described the Beta Kun terror in Hungary, spent a fewdays in Bucharest in 1937, not to gather authentic information for abook that could have been called When Esther Is Queen or When Pop-paea Rules, but to give some unwarranted authority to the book he hadbeen asked to write about Corneliu Codreanu, L'Envoye de L'Archange .The book's timely first edition came out a few days before Codreanu'sassassination as a precursory exculpation of this dastardly crime .

Between one appointment and one lunch at the Royal Palace, Tharaudsolicited and was granted an interview with Codreanu . I was in Codre-anu's anteroom with a dozen other persons at the time of Tharaud'svisit. At one moment the Captain opened the door of his office andlooked out at the people present . In a calm and low voice he asked oneof the Legionaries to fetch chairs for two ladies who were there standing,and closed the door. Now, here is how Mr. Tharaud describes this inci-dent, without explaining where and how he learned the Rumanianlanguage. "Codreanu violently opened the door and shouted to hisLegionaries : `Don't make so much noise, or I'll kick you out of thisrooml"' And Tharaud adds sanctimoniously : "The words and intona-tion were probably learned from his patron Adolf Hitler."

If the readers of L'Envoye de L'Archange had been informed of thisfraud they would have understood immediately that the author was

Falsehood, the Scoundrels' Weapon / 233prepared to go to any limit in order to deliver the exact goods he wasasked to deliver : the moral assassination of the Captain before his mur-der in Tancabesti.A. L. Easterman is another writer who paid a visit to Bucharest that

same year. He also lunched at the Royal Palace with the notoriouscouple, Carol and Lupescu, and also solicited an interview with Codre-anu, who granted it without any hesitation . Mr. Easterman is a Jew,and this bit of information was among the routine biographical notesabout him that I gave to Codreanu for his information prior to theinterview. The conversation with the Captain lasted quite a while ;Princess Despina Cantacuzene, sister of General Cantacuzene, served, ifI am not mistaken, as interpreter . Mainly because of the ethnic origin ofhis visitor, the Captain took special pains in welcoming him . Codreanueven presented Easterman with a picture of himself with the followinginscription : "To Mr. Easterman, a loyal adversary ."The Captain had once again been too big-hearted in his attitude

toward the people he met . This adversary was not, after all, as loyal as heseemed. How different would have been the image of the Captain ifEasterman had written a truthful account in his book King Carol, Hitlerand Lupescu of the friendly way Codreanu received him, a declaredpolitical adversary .Here is how Mr . Easterman told the story : No one in Bucharest, ex-

cept for a few friends of his, knew he was a Jew. When he told thosefriends he intended to interview Codreanu, they insisted that he giveup this dangerous plan. "This man has already killed many Jews," theysaid. "If he discovers that you are a Jew, you are a dead duck ." Easter-man, with professional intrepidity, decided it would be better to risk hislife than to give up the opportunity of talking with the leader of a"terrorist, secret" organization . Two uniformed Legionaries, armed tothe teeth, arrived in Codreanu's car at Easterman's hotel to take him tothe interview. At every moment during his ride, during the interview,and during the return trip to the hotel, where his friends were awaitinghim breathlessly, he expected to be recognized and liquidated .The truth is that Codreanu had always proclaimed that violence

against Jews was a stupid mistake . He would have immediately ex-pelled from the Movement any fool who had so much as broken awindow in a Jewish-owned shop. The Legionaries sent to escort Mr.Easterman, the courtesy with which he was surrounded, the photographwith the friendly inscription-all were manifestations of Codreanu'scourteous and chivalrous nature, a nature his deceitful guest was in-capable of understanding .

It is a pity that Easterman's book is out of print today since it dis-

234 / The Suicide of Europe

closed for the first time "the real story" of Mme . Lupescu's parentagewithout any consideration for Papa Lupescu's most delicate feelings .Mr. Easterman was the first to "discover" that Elena was not thedaughter of the honest Jewish pharmacist Lupescu, but was the illegiti-mate daughter of King Carol I, her lover's great-uncle . This made hersomewhat of an aunt of Carol II, a fact that gave her no small claim tothe Rumanian Crown . Mr . Easterman's book is "suggested reading" byMessrs. Hans Rogger and Eugen Weber in their book, The EuropeanRight .

Who were, who are, the slanderers of the Legionary Movement? Theyare to be found, first of all, among the agents of the international mafia,which controls almost all the communication media and means of in-formation. This is the same group of criminals that established Bol-shevism in Russia and handed over to the Communist empire elevenEuropean countries and all of China with more than a third of theworld's population and half of its land area .

They are to be found also among those perverted educators who havegotten hold of so many significant professorships in the universities ofthe West and have taken upon themselves the task of brainwashing adeceived generation .

They are to be found, too, in every country among those conspiratorswhom United States Senator Joseph R. McCarthy tried to smoke out ofpositions in the U .S. Administration .Aside from the three or four hundred members of the Rumanian

Communist Party, the majority of whom were of foreign origin, theRumanian enemies of the Movement generally fall into three categories :1 . Those politicians who followed in peacetime the policy of Titulescubecause they were thus able to guarantee their own political and ma-terial status . 2. "Bourgeois" groups connected with the different politicalparties that did not realize in time it was the Legionary Movement thatoffered them the best defense against the attacks of international Com-munism. They witnessed without protesting the persecution of theRumanian youth by Carol and his stooges, thus confirming the well-known fact that it is sometimes easier to forgive those who have sinnedagainst you than those against whom you have sinned . 3 . The fiercestRumanian enemies of the Movement were those who, constantly con-spiring with the enemy during Rumania's war in the East, finally de-livered their country into his hands-those whom the United States andall other Western governments recognize today as the only authorizeddefenders of the enslaved and tortured Rumanian people .

Sifting through the pile of accumulated slander, the last always worsethan the one preceding it, we come to two characters, James Dugan andCarroll Stewart, who decided to go all out . They sprinkled their book

Falsehood, the Scoundrels' Weapon / 235Tidal Wave,' which otherwise would have been a matter-of-fact accountof a U.S. Air Force raid over Rumanian territory, with an incrediblecollection of lies directed against not only the Legionary Movement butalso against Rumania in general . For any Rumanian the book is anobject of amusement rather than bitterness . But Tidal Wave was a bestseller in the United States because it recounted the remarkable exploitsof U.S. airmen. As a result, hundreds of thousands of Americans wereforced to swallow, along with the truthful details of the raid, the liesthat are liberally sprinkled throughout the rest of the book .Let us examine a few samples from the dozens that could be gathered ."Marshal Antonescu [explain the two maligners] won his fame in 1919

when he was the head of a gang that specialized in the looting of stores,hospitals and private homes in Bucharest." In truth, Marshal Antonescuwas a distinguished career officer, and until 1919 had been the head ofthe Operation Department of the Rumanian General Staff . After thathe had been Military Attache in London, Commander of a division,Commander of an army corps, Minister of Defense, Prime Minister, andCommander-in-Chief of the Rumanian Army .

In June 1940, we are informed, "Antonescu's terrorists" captured allthe allied engineers working at the oil fields and threw them into the"torture rooms of the Iron Guard ." Actually, by June 1940, the IronGuard, its leaders having been assassinated by King Carol and its mem-bers having been imprisoned or exiled, no longer existed as a politicalgroup. As for General Antonescu, he was a prisoner of the same KingCarol in the Monastery of Bistritsa .

Referring to a conversation between American Sergeant Robert Lockyand Princess Caradgea, the authors say : "Antonescu's Fascists wouldhave closed their eyes to her anti-Soviet ideas ; but if she had been in-volved in an evasion attempt [of American prisoners], the Iron Guardwould have undoubtedly tried to hang her ." 2 In the summer of 1944,when this interview took place, the Iron Guard was no longer in con-trol of Rumania's Government . For three and a half years its membershad been in Marshal Antonescu's prisons, in German concentrationcamps, or at the front .

Marshal Antonescu kindly paid a visit to the wounded American air-men in their hospital . Here is the jesters' account : "The Marshal en-tered the hospital surrounded by a crowd of unknown people who weredressed in long leather mantles, looked like assassins, and bore machineguns under their arms ."

'This book was also published as Ploesti: Great Ground-Air Battle, I August, 1943(New York, Random House, 1964) .'Why would the Iron Guard have to forgive Princess Caradgea for her "anti-Soviet

ideas"? The Iron Guard was anti-Soviet by definition; she would have had to be for-given only if she had had pro-Soviet ideas, which we assume was not the case .

236 / The Suicide of Europe

To crown the collection we quote these last words put in the mouthof one of the American airmen: "Tomorrow morning we will be out ofthis country of SOB's ."

In a much too courteous letter directed to those extraordinary au-thors, General Chirnoaga, of the Rumanian Army, asked them to divulgethe source of their fantastic information. He received no answer. Wecannot believe that the source could be Princess Caradgea ; and wewould be very sorry if it were Sergeant Robert Locky or any of his com-rades, for no prisoners of war have ever been treated with more solici-tude, better cared for, or more pampered than the American airmenwho were brought down on Rumanian soil .

We ask any honest American citizen : Are such methods commendable?How could their victims-individuals, groups, or nations-defend them-selves against such slander, since there is no tribunal of honor beforewhich the slanderers would have to substantiate their allegations .

Again special mention is due the learned and painful exertions ofHans Rogger and Eugen Weber, professors of history at the Universityof California, in The European Right in which the Legionary Move-ment is only one of the political groups laboriously studied by variouscontributors, with the obvious general purpose of discrediting any or-ganized effort toward the reconciliation of classes and the concentrationof mutual energies, the common denominators of all the "Rightist"movements and of any fight against Communist infiltration or conquest .We could not help but admire, though not approve, the diversified

ways of keeping the mind of the absorbed reader from the fundamentalsubstratum of all this hocus-pocus-the master question that has neverbeen examined in The European Right: Had any other political forma-tion in Rumania really ever tried to fight the Communists? We recognizealso the unity of intent and of method through almost six hundred pageswritten by ten different authors ; but we must deeply regret that thosemethods, judging by the chapter concerning Rumania and the Legion-ary Movement, include a wild assumption of facts that have never oc-curred, and the untruthfulness of which would easily have been demon-strated if sources of information other than those hostile to the Move-ment had been studied . This was the case, for instance, with the so-called "partial list of Legionary exploits committed before the finalrising of January 1941 and exclusive of the Jilava murders," publishedby Antonescu in his account of those days . This list is as fraudulent as"the Legionary plan to murder their political enemies on New Year'sEve, so that Rumania could enter the New Year purified of the leprosyof the past ." Those pieces of "information" mentioned by the learnedprofessors are nothing more than a fantastic product of what Antonescu

Falsehood, the Scoundrels' Weapon / 237

himself called his "polemic talents," the Ghyka and Groza affairs beingcases in point to prove that these talents stopped at nothing .

But we have another quarrel, a more subtle one, with Professor Weber .We quote him :

The legionaries reminded one . . . of the fundamentalist mentality de-scribed by Alan F . Westin in his essay on the John Birch Society . . . . Bothassume the existence of total conspiracies and total solutions, both "refuseto believe in the integrity and patriotism of those who lead the dominantsocial groups" ; both "reject the political system [and] lash out at 'politi-cians,' the major parties and the give and take of political compromise" ;both despise existing recipes for solving current problems and favor "dras-tic panaceas requiring major social change" ; both advocate direct action,even to the point of calculated violence .3

We have not "assumed" the existence of "total conspiracies" ; we havebeen forced to ascertain the undeniable existence of that conspiracywhich has already handed over to Communist imperialism one-third ofthe population of the world, including our nation and our country .We do not lash out at all the politicians, or at every political party assuch, but at those that have brought the world to its present situation .We do not know exactly what Messrs . Weber and Rogger mean by the"give and take of political compromise" ; but if they mean, on the innerpolitical field, this symbiosis between supposedly opposed politicalgroups, which helps solidify public opinion in the illusion that thecountry's interests are always served by a watchful opposition ; or on theinternational field, the "meeting at the middle of the road" with a Com-munist establishment that has never budged one inch from its funda-mental position, then certainly we do not believe in this "give and takeof political compromise."

Finding, however, a similarity between the Legionary Movement andThe John Birch Society because "both advocate direct action, even tothe point of calculated violence," is unjust for The John Birch Societyand by the same token for the Legionary Movement. The former, asProfessor Weber knows very well, has never advocated direct action andviolence ; and if the latter was unable to limit itself to the calm ways ofThe John Birch Society, it is only because the most brutal direct actionand the most cruel violence was used against it .

There is however a point of similarity that Messrs . Weber and Westinhave failed to detect in their attempt to hit two birds with one stone .Both The John Birch Society and the Legionary Movement are thetargets of a similar bombardment of slanders and impostures emanatingfrom the same quarter and for the same motives. We are, each in our

3 Weber, in "Romania," The European Right, pp . 570-571 . Italics added .

238 / The Suicide of Europe

sphere of action, among the genuine and unwavering opponents of Com-munism, whatever its masks, and the adversaries of all those who con-sciously or unconsciously, guiltily or stupidly, purposefully or by oppor-tunism, openly or stealthfully, for minor motives of immediate financialgain or for long-range motives of political and ideological nature, sin-cerely or by pure mischief, lend a hand to Communist advance, infiltra-tion, and corruption.

CHAPTER

XXXI

Roving in Foreign Parts

I had to spend several weeks in Sofia, Bulgaria, a friendly butnoncombatant country, waiting for Ribbentrop's authorization to crossGermany, without which I would have risked being interned or in someother way immobilized-as Marshal Antonescu would have liked me tobe. Authorization was finally granted with the single condition that Ishould not try to contact those of my comrades who were already inGermany .

On my way to Vienna we had to change trains at the bridge over theDrava, which had just been blown up by Yugoslav Partisans . This un-happy country had already entered, weeks before, the insane war thathad been engineered by foreign agents and that, after wonders of hero-ism and endurance, would lead Mihailovich and his gallant Chetniksto Tito's slaughterhouses, which were also those of Churchill andRoosevelt .

In Berlin, by pure chance, I ran into Constantin Stoicanescu, one ofmy comrades. Without breaking my promise I was able to learn there-fore that Horia Sima, who had left Rumania sometime after me, wasalready in Berlin, and that he and about four hundred Legionaries whohad taken refuge in Germany had been assigned forced domicile . All ofthem had asked to enlist separately or as a body in the German Armyand to be sent to the Eastern Front . On Antonescu's insistence, nodoubt, this satisfaction had been denied to them exactly as to theircomrades in the Rumanian prisons . Stoicanescu suggested that I try toconvince the Helsinki Government to accept the idea of the formationof a Rumanian Legion in the Finnish Army . I knew that Marshal Carlvon Mannerheim, who had fought in World War I on the RumanianFront and had been saved from capture, as he told me himself, by aRumanian cavalry patrol, had great admiration for the Rumanian

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240 The Suicide o f Europe

soldier and sympathy for our country. The chances were not small,therefore, that this suggestion would have been accepted if I had had theopportunity to make it .On August 7, 1941, I was in Copenhagen, the guest of my friend

Giuseppe Sapuppo, the Italian Envoy, while awaiting the answer of theFinnish Government concerning my personal request for enlistment .The consent came, along with the welcome of a country where I hadbeen Rumania's Envoy for several years . I was making final preparationsfor the winter campaign, already near at hand in those nordic regions,when I was informed that, on afterthought, the Finnish Government,thanking me for the sympathy I had shown for Finland, had found thatit was impossible for it to make use of my services because I did notspeak Finnish .What had happened was that Radio Helsinki had announced my

enlistment prematurely. Antonescu intervened immediately in Berlin,Berlin intervened in Helsinki, and Helsinki had to change its mind.The Finnish project having been exploded, thanks to the mad Mar-

shal's intrigues, I tried to thwart at least some of his future schemes . Ina letter to Ribbentrop I told the whole story of the so-called Legionaryrebellion and explained the gross deceptions of which he had been thevictim, especially with regard to the Groza and Ghyka cases . I did not,of course, expect any immediate reaction or even an answer, but hopedto warn him of other attempts at mystification .

Sometime later, in two letters (one to Hitler, the other to Ribbentrop)I again took up the question of the formation of a Rumanian Legionon the German Eastern Front . For a long while I received no answers tothose letters nor to all my warnings about the uncertainty of the Ru-manian situation as long as Rumanian affairs were exclusively in thehands of enemies of the Legionary Movement . When the answer finallycame, in tragic circumstances I will relate later, it recognized all theaccuracy of my predictions and adopted my suggestions concerning theparticipation of the Iron Guard in the defense of Eastern and CentralEurope against the Communist menace ; but it was too late then foranything but a last and desperate effort .

From August 1941 to September 1944 the political situation in Ru-mania and in Europe immobilized me in Denmark where, a short timebefore, my wife, my son, and I had spent the last happy days of our lives .Denmark is a hospitable country, intended to live through uninter-rupted peace with an eternal smile on her face, where the memory of agreater past left no bitterness but only a legitimate pride, and wherethe quickness of the mind is like a sudden ray of sun amidst the heavyfogs of a Scandinavian autumn . Shakespearean phantoms still wanderin romantic Denmark, Ophelia still floats dolefully over lonely lakes

Roving in Foreign Parts / 241

among the water lilies, and Hamlet still dreams in Elsinore . In the parkof Holsteinsborg, under the lofty ivy-covered oak, Hans Christian Ander-sen still tells his enchanted tales to the children of his friends .Foreign occupation and a fratricidal war have induced in this people,

whose public life and personal relations were those of a big family,strong currents of hate and disintegration for which its soul was notprepared. The friendly welcome that greeted me and other refugees ofboth camps even in the most acute period of turmoil was proof, how-ever, of the measure of sanity and decency that still remained .Three personalities, it seems to me, dominated those troubled times :

King Christian X, Prime Minister Thorvald Stauning and Foreign Min-ister Scavenius . Stauning and Scavenius were of quite different social andpolitical backgrounds, but both were of equal prudence and both con-ducted themselves faultlessly throughout a period when no one knewwhat the next day would bring. An atmosphere of moderation andjustice disappeared when Stauning died . Lamentable incidents thatmany Danes would like to forget would not have happened if KingChristian and Stauning had been alive at the time of the violent de-noument .

Holsteinsborg, the elegiac castle of Count Bent Holstein, where atnight one was lulled to sleep by the rhythmic complaint of the Kattegat,and where we had frequently gathered for the fall drives in the richpheasant covers, has often been a tonic to my nostalgia and to myworries. Another friendly home was that of Helmer Rosting, formerHigh Commissioner of the League of Nations in Danzig, where he suc-ceeded in preventing during a dangerous situation a conflict betweenGermany and Poland . Captain Schallburg, a great friend of my son anda frequent guest at the Rumanian Legation, was at the time of my re-turn to Denmark, on the Eastern Front as Commander of the heroicDenmark Legion. Each of these three friends of mine, Count Holstein,Helmer Rosting and Captain Schallburg, enlightened intelligences,generous hearts, and ardent patriots, died victims of the same drama-a drama so much greater for them or for those who loved them thatthey passed away without having been understood by their compatriots .

During this period of inactivity I made use of the help of friendly dip-lomats, and of my personal experiences, to gather from lucrative privateand official materials, information on the origins of World War II andits attendant responsibilities . I published the result of my research in abook entitled La Bete sans Nom-Enquete sur les Responsabilitds (TheNameless Beast-An Inquiry into the Responsibilities) . The sum of myconclusions was that those who provoked the last conflict could not havebeen ignorant of the fact that a German defeat meant the victory onlyof international Communism . This could not have been interpreted as

242 / The Suicide of Europe

an attack on Germany's interest ; on the other hand I did not at any mo-ment attack Antonescu or even allude to the difficulties we had with him .I was therefore rather startled when the German censor to whom I hadto submit my typescript informed me that Ribbentrop asked me not topublish the book in order not to irritate Marshal Antonescu with whom,he let me know, they already had had enough difficulties because of theLegion. The simple appearance of a book of mine with German author-ization, I was told, would be enough to send the Marshal into a tantrumagain. So I had to publish my work under a transparent pseudonym . Asan act of routine courtesy I also asked for the authorization of the DanishForeign Office, which was functioning at that time without a titular headunder the direction of the chiefs of the various sections . The authoriza-tion was reluctantly granted by an official who warned me of the personalrisks I was taking in case of a victory of the Soviet-Western coalition . Ibelieved that such kind thoughtfulness concerning my personal welfaredeserved more than a mere verbal acknowledgement . Therefore, homeagain, I renewed my thanks by letter, assuring my interlocutor that "what-ever those risks might be, they were much smaller than those which weretaken on the Eastern Front by millions of youth fighting for the defenseof a world to which Denmark also belonged ."

The fear of the Germans, of irritating Marshal Antonescu, manifesteditself anew in much more unpleasant circumstances for the Movementthan that of the censure of my book .

We were still far from the Italian betrayal and still farther from thebetrayal of which Rumania was to be a victim . However, the special sen-sitiveness we had been able to acquire during so many years of strugglewith the occult powers, and our instinctive familiarity with Rumaniancontingencies, gave us as early as the last months of 1942 the certitudethat contacts with the enemy had been established by certain groups ofthe old Rumanian political cliques . We thought also that it was almostimpossible that Antonescu would not have known something about this .Dr. Werner Best, the German High Commissioner, and other German

interlocutors to whom I was expressing our suspicions, identifyingthemselves not unnaturally with the feeling of the Rumanian people,all answered with the same argument : "How could you imagine thatsomebody in Rumania would wish a Soviet victory? This would meanthe end of your countryl" None of them could have imagined howforeign to the Rumanian soul and the Rumanian feelings were ourpolitical cliques, abased and corrupted by the methods of the Carol-Lupescu regime .

In his forced residence in the Berlin suburbs, Horia Sima, in moredirect contact with the country, discovered still more reasons for alarm .His conviction was much stronger than mine regarding the impervious-

Roving in Foreign Parts / 243ness of the German Government to any information that would havequestioned the authority of Marshal Antonescu or the fidelity and goodfaith of those who surrounded him .

Sima decided consequently to leave Germany clandestinely and togo to Rome where he hoped to find in 11 Duce or in his son-in-law,Count Ciano, more attentive listeners to his warnings .

When in December 1942 it was announced in the German newspapersthat Horia Sima had disappeared, Antonescu, furious, asked immedi-ately that all the Legionaries in Germany be sent back to Rumania .Hitler gave an ultimatum : Sima had to return to Germany without anydelay; failing that, all the Legionaries in Germany would be deliveredto Antonescu . Count Ciano, who had apparently no special interest inletting his father-in-law hear anything about "contacts with the enemy,"under the pretext of leading Sima to an interview with 11 Duce hadhim arrested by the Italian police, delivered to the Gestapo and sentback by plane to Germany .

During that same period I was shown at the German High Commis-sariat in Copenhagen, in an official weekly news bulletin, the informa-tion that Marshal Antonescu had let Hitler know that he would beobliged to withdraw a part of his troops from Russia to maintain orderin the country if the head of the Legionary Movement and all the Le-gionaries in Germany were not immediately arrested and sent to concen-tration camps-again the same lack of responsibility, the same imposture,the same fixed idea, even in an already very critical military situation .

Horia Sima and the approximately four hundred Legionaries presentin Germany were immediately deprived of the relative liberty they hadenjoyed until then, and were interned in the Buchenwald and Dachauconcentration camps, to suffer new persecutions in new prisons fromwhich they would emerge two years later when the betrayal they hadforeseen and announced had indeed taken place .

CHAPTER

XXXII

The Betrayed Army

The history of this betrayal is written in few but adequatewords in the memorandum presented at the Paris peace conference in1946 by Messrs. Visoianu and Gafencu on behalf of the group of Ruma-nian politicians who had undertaken the direction of Rumanian affairsafter the fall of Marshal Antonescu . Visoianu and Gafencu reminded therepresentatives of the Western Powers and the Soviets that this group it-self had "asked that a powerful Russian offensive break through theRumanian Front" in order to enable them to be done with the Antonescuregime and with any further Rumanian resistance . Gafencu is dead, butVisoianu is quite alive and has been chosen as head of the RumanianNational Committee to represent the interests of twenty million Ruma-nians who have been reduced to slavery, thanks to the offensive Visoianuand his clique once clamored for .Mme. Basdevant, who collected all her documentation in the Visoianu-

Gafencu circles, completes this information :

Not only have the political parties organized an active propaganda inorder to liberate their country from the Nazi yoke, but they have partici-pated, according to their means, in the democracies' fight . By 1940, Maniu[Chief of the National Peasant Party] had set up an organization forcollecting and transmitting information to the allied governments .

General Chirnoaga, a gallant and faithful soldier, thus manifests hisindignation in his book Un Chapitre d'Histoire Roumaine :

Sol While the Rumanian armies were fighting the Soviets for the salvationof the Rumanian people, Iuliu Maniu and other political leaders were col-lecting information concerning our fighting capacities and the military op-erations in preparation, and were transmitting them to the Western Powers,which transmitted them to the Soviets .

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The Betrayed Army / 245

The leaders of the old political parties, which at no moment hadceased to exist and to operate openly or secretly, had declared them-selves in agreement with the reoccupation of Bessarabia and Bucovina,because otherwise they would have lost all that was left of their popu-larity. But their political horizons and their instinct for national self-preservation did not extend further than that. Even if they had deniedit, they were much more sensitive to French and British circumstancesthan to Rumanian ones . In fact, they were also the slaves of those darkforces that had thrown France and Great Britain into a war that was nottheirs and that would deprive them forever of their rank and stationamong the great and independent nations of the world .

Besides the politicians, there were some Generals who had likewise beenbroken by Carol, enough to make a working proposition of the politi-cians' conspiracy. There was General Steflea, for instance, the man whodid not want us to drive the Soviet troops from that stolen bit of ter-ritory, and who, at Antonescu's trial by a Communist court, boastedof having, as Chief of the General Staff, betrayed the Marshal's confi-dence by continuously sabotaging the sending of materials and troops tothe Eastern Front . There was General Racovitza, Commander of theOperational Forces, who concocted with the politicians the faked ar-mistice that sent half of the Rumanian Front troops to Siberia's concen-tration camps .

The defeatists and traitors, civilians or military, those who have notatoned for their sins (as did Iuliu Maniu and Dinu Brfltianu by deathin a Communist prison) invoked two extenuating circumstances : 1 .Antonescu ought not to have sent our troops further than the Dniester,the old Rumanian borders; 2. The country had to be saved from Na-tional Socialist occupation and from National Socialist tyranny .

The idea of halting the advance of Rumanian troops at the Dniestercould have been hatched only in brains deprived of any political ormilitary vision and experience . Who could have guaranteed not onlyour further possession of the two Eastern provinces but also our veryexistence in case of a Soviet victory? Certainly not Mr. Roosevelt andSir Winston Churchill, who did not hesitate to sacrifice their allies Po-land and Yugoslavia in order to comply with the insolent demands oftheir friend Stalin . Even if the only motive of our Iliad in the RussianSteppes had been the obligation to defeat completely and at whateverprice such an implacable enemy as Soviet Russia, it would have beenfully justified. For centuries, however, the inescapable destiny of theRumanian people had been to defend against the assault of the heathensthose embattled borderlands of Christian Europe ; and I must emphasize,by the way, that Marshal Antonescu had a deep consciousness of this

246 / The Suicide of Europe

ultra-Rumanian dimension to Rumania's destiny . I believe that in cir-cumstances other than those he had created by his senseless aggressionagainst the Legionary Movement, he would have preferred to fight tothe last man with the Legion at his side rather than consent to a capit-ulation which might have meant "Finis Daciae" for a hundred yearsand more .

The astronomical lies to which the advocates of the "National Social-ist tyranny" argument are forced to resort when trying to exculpatethemselves are the best proofs of their falseness . This tyranny had tobe based on force, upon the number of German troops that were "oc-cupying" Rumania. Gafencu tells us that in December 1940 the Germanshad 500,000 men in our country. Mme. Basdevant goes a little furtherand talks of about 1,000,000 men . The truth is that until the end ofFebruary 1941 there were never more than 60,000 German soldiers inRumania. Those troops had been requested by us as a guarantee againstthe permanent danger of further Russian aggression . When the firstthree divisions were sent, we would have been very glad if there hadbeen more; I know, I was then the Foreign Minister of my country . Whenthe troops destined to the Balkan Front began to come, they passedthrough directly to Bulgaria without stopping in Rumania . When inApril and June 1941 the Second German Army formed in Moldavia forthe campaign in Russia, its effectives never went beyond 250,000 men .Furthermore, it never was an occupation army but an allied army, whichwas temporarily stationed on Rumanian soil and with which our soldiersfought shoulder to shoulder against the common enemy . All these factswere perfectly known to Mr . Gafencu and Mme. Basdevant . 1

Great Britain declared war on Finland, Rumania and Bulgaria onDecember 7, 1941 ; but it was Mihai Antonescu, as Rumanian Ministerof Foreign Affairs, who declared war on the United States, a foolishmove which demonstrated his total servility to the suggestions of theWilhelmstrasse . Foolish because he was taking the initiative in a conflictthat could bring us only trouble . Superfluous because Finland, whofought as a German ally in the same conditions as we, did not committhe same mistake .

It was Mihai Antonescu, however, who at the moment in which thesituation on the Russian front seemed to take a turn for the worse forGermany, tried without delay to establish contacts through our agentsin neutral countries with those he had wantonly provoked . His attemptto form a "Front of the Small Belligerents" (Rumania, Bulgaria, Croa-'Tyranny was applied only against one group of Rumanians by Marshal Antonescu

and by Hitler: the Legionaries. There were thousands of them in Rumanian concen-tration camps and hundreds in German ones, while conspiring politicians and enemyagents were moving about freely between Bucharest, Cairo, Stockholm, and Bern .

The Betrayed Army / 247

tia, Slovakia), and later a "Latin Axis" (Rumania, Italy, France, Spain,Portugal) were so many preliminaries to an intended coat-turning .

Marshal Antonescu could not have been ignorant of the action of hisMinister of Foreign Affairs, nor of the contacts already established be-tween the leaders of the opposition political parties and the enemy . Itwas certainly with his consent that Mihai Antonescu went to Rome inJuly 1943 to convince Mussolini of the necessity of establishing prelim-inary contacts with the Western Powers; and it was certainly with hisconsent also that our diplomatic agents in Stockholm had made contactwith Mme. Kollontai . Nor could the Marshal have been ignorant of theactivities of the agents of Maniu and Dinu Bratianu in Cairo to whomhis administration had delivered the necessary passports, granted thenecessary visas, and for whom they had procured the necessary foreigncurrency.

The result of all attempts behind the back of our fighting armies wasnil and only hastened the final catastrophe . The "busybodies" had for-gotten an ironclad law of clandestine negotiations in time of war : theenemy will always make the best of arrangements with would be traitors,but will never feel obliged to grant them any special considerations atthe moment of the final settlement.By November 1942, informed by the diplomatic grapevine and by

the neutral press of the intensification of the activities of the Rumaniandefeatists, I had resumed my sterile and unilateral correspondence withthe German leaders. This correspondence explains, partly at least, theantipathy that those leaders have always manifested toward my humbleperson; very naturally this antipathy did not relent when my repeatedwarnings proved to have been justified.

It was only after Italy passed into the enemy camp that the alarmHoria Sima and I tried to spread among political and military circles inGermany was given some attention . "What are those diplomats of yoursdoing in Sweden?" Dr. Werner Best once asked me . "Exactly what allour diplomats in neutral countries are doing at this moment : trying toget in contact with the enemy," I answered.

On August 23, 1944, the saddest day in the life of many Rumanians,I was listening to the Bucharest radio in the home of friends, when Isuddenly heard a young and rather uncertain voice saying words I hadhoped never to hear in connection with our armies : "our exhaustedtroops" . . . "our understanding with the Russian command" . . . "anarmistice had been signed ." I finally understoood that it was King Mi-chael who was announcing to his people that a convention of armisticehad been signed between Rumania and Soviet Russia, ordering Ruman-ian troops to lay down their weapons .

248 / The Suicide of Europe

I could not know that I had been fooled along with our army andtwenty million Rumanians . No convention of armistice had been signed ;the announcement was a deliberate lie meant to prevent any resistanceto the advance of Russian troops . Those troops penetrated and sur-rounded almost everywhere Rumanian units that were conforming trust-ingly to the order of cease-fire. More than half of the Rumanian troopspresent on the front, Generals, officers and troops, hoodwinked andtrapped, were taken prisoners, taken to Siberia where they were kept forseveral years and from which thousands of them never returned .

I left the home of my friends somewhat dazed, in the state of mind ofa man who has persistently and accurately announced a disaster that inspite of all, he had hoped would not occur . The next day I received aphone call from Dr . Best asking me to call on him about urgent matters .I found him in the company of two Generals-one of the Wehrmacht,the other from the Schutzstaffel . Best's greeting was Vor diesem habenSie uns schon vor zwei Jahre gewarnt" ("You warned us about this twoyears ago.")

I had the first news about what had occurred in Bucharest from myGerman interlocutors who were fully aware of what this breach, openedby King Michael's defection, meant not only for the Eastern Front butfor the whole strategic picture . I heard the full story of that unbeliev-able betrayal only a few days later when I met Sima and my comrades .

It appeared that Marshal Antonescu, like Mussolini, had been invitedto the Royal Palace where he was kidnapped by his royal host . Bestand the Generals, impressed by the similarity of the two incidents, wereasking themselves if the intention of the Palace conspirators did not gofurther than that sudden cease-fire . I understood better than they themoral and patriotic "qualities" of those who had advised the King inthose circumstances, and my worries were even greater than theirs .

On Ribbentrop's behalf, Best asked me if I thought that it was pos-sible to organize new Rumanian forces that would continue the fightagainst the common enemy, and if I were prepared to cooperate inthis attempt . I answered that I had always been convinced that a Sovietvictory would mean first Rumania's disappearance as an independentstate, and then as a nation . I believed that our fight must continue atany price and with whatever means we could muster; I was thereforeready to cooperate. Best informed me that Horia Sima and the fourhundred Legionaries had been liberated, that Sima would be soon inVienna from where we would be able to operate . He assured me that inBerlin I would find Herr Ribbentrop . Once again we missed one anotherthrough no fault of mine .

My preparations were quickly made . Before leaving I tried to persuade

The Betrayed Army / 249

Schallburg's sister-in law to leave Copenhagen because we knew that herlife was in danger there . She refused, but asked me to provide her witha handgun, which I did. Warnings and gun did not help much ; halfa dozen "resistant" heroes invaded her home a few days later and rid-dled her with their bullets . Here is a wreath on "Mauschen's" grave .

CHAPTER

XXXIII

Posthumous Triumph

We mean here the posthumous triumph of the Barthou-Titu-lescu policy . Barthou and Titulescu were already dead ; Benes wouldsoon be the same, helped through the pearly gates, or perhaps throughmore somber portals, by his Kremlin friends . It was the triumph of abetrayal not only of Rumania's most vital interests but also of Europe'sand those of Western Civilization .

There is perhaps a difference between betrayal and treason . Treasonalways implies deliberate action whereas betrayal may also cover errors ofjudgment of such magnitude that treason has no difficulty in benefitingfrom them. We ask the reader, however, not to hold too much againstus if in relating what occurred in Bucharest between 1942 and 1944 we donot feel always able, or obliged, to make a clearcut distinction betweenthe two.

#

sThe Stalingrad disaster was exclusively the result of the stubbornness

with which Hitler insisted on a frontal attack on the city, thereby givingup a priori any idea of maneuver. As soon as the retreat from Stalingradbegan, a retreat in which the Rumanian Army lost four divisions, Gen-eral Avramescu, Commander of our troops on the Crimean sector, for-warded a new plan of operation to the German command . What theGeneral recommended was the systematic and timely evacuation of Bes-sarabia and Moldavia and the systematic and timely organization of thedefense along the line of the Moldavian Carpathians, joined with theexisting Namoloasa-Galati line of fortifications and the Danube delta .Avramescu was certain of his ability to resist indefinitely behind suchan organized barricade, and he offered two reasons in support of hisrecommendation: 1 . The most effective utilization of the divisions stillat our disposition ; 2. The treasonable activities of the political cir-

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Posthumous Triumph / 251

cles, which would force him to devote a part of his attention to thesecurity of the inner front. We do not think that General Avramescuexaggerated the possibilities of an almost unconquerable defense, underthe circumstances he outlined . Indeed, at the time of the false armisticethere was on Rumanian soil besides German troops the equivalent ofthirty Rumanian divisions immediately available to the Rumanian com-mand and twenty-one divisions in formation . Most important, the mod-ern armament we had been promised by Germany and had expected fromthe beginning of the hostilities, had finally been delivered and was beingdistributed to our troops .

Let us pause a moment and observe that such a prolonged blockadeof the advance of the Soviet armies toward Central and Southeast Eur-ope would have changed impressively the general strategic picture notonly on the Eastern Front but also from the point of view of the West-ern Powers. Of the two strategies that confronted one another sincethe landing in North Africa, the Churchill-Patton-Montgomery thesisand the Marshall-Hopkins-Stalin construction, it was the first that wouldhave been strongly favored by a Russian setback in Rumania . In suchcircumstances it would have been the Western Powers that would havefirst reached Vienna, Budapest, Prague, Belgrade, Sofia, the Danube, andfinally Bucharest.'

Alarmed by the Avramescu recommendations, Hitler asked his Envoyin Bucharest Baron Manfred von Killinger to report on the alleged de-featist activities of the political parties . Killinger denied vigorously Gen-eral Avramescu's assertions, denouncing them as a part of ein Legionaresintrigen Nest . The Avramescu recommendation was rejected, but theGeneral sounded the alarm once more by resigning his command . Hewas to resume it a few months later in quite different circumstances, butin the same spirit. 2

1 Among the immediate possibilities there was also the bringing into line of the Bul-garian Army . The position of Bulgaria toward the Central Powers was that of a non-combatant ally; her tough and gallant soldiers had not seen action until then .The Prince-Regent and the Bulgarian Generals would certainly have preferred tofight than to be hanged . A Bulgarian contribution to the resistance against Commu-nist advance would have greatly increased the chances of bringing the Western Alliesto the Danube, and farther, before the Soviets .

2 0n July 24, 1944, Hitler ordered General Hans Friesner to take command of thearmy groups which were fighting in the southern Ukraine and which were composedof two Rumanian Armies and two German Armies. The General asked to be allowedto shorten the front by a retreat towards the Prut, and eventually towards the Mol-davian Carpathians and the old line of fortifications . NAmoloasa-Galati . The argumentshe put forward were identical to those used by General Avramescu : a better use oftroops at his disposition, the uncertainty of the inner-front, and the demoralizingeffect of the intrigues of the politicians upon the attitude of certain Rumanian Gen-erals . Hitler, wrongly informed by his Envoy in Bucharest did not give enough im-portance to these intrigues, and ordered General Friesner to fight where he stood .After the resignation of Avramecsu, the command of the Army was taken over by Gen-

252 / The Suicide o f Europe

In Bucharest Marshal Antonescu, who like Carol had assumed orusurped the authority of the State, had like him abandoned it at themoment of greatest danger into the hands of whomever was there . Itseemed that in Antonescu's tormented soul, willpower, power of deci-sion and imagination had suddenly broken down ; the stubborn, domineer-ing, courageous and audacious man had given up any pretension to lead-ership. From Marshal Antonescu's hands, Rumania's destiny passed intothose of the chiefs of the old political parties, Iuliu Maniu and DinuBratianu, later associated with Titel Petrescu, chief of a so-called Social-ist Party, and with Lucretiu Patrascanu, representative of the Commu-nist Party. Working directly with them was the flotsam of the Titulescuperiod that had again taken possession of the Foreign Office under theleadership of a certain Niculescu-Buzesti. The clique that surroundedKing Michael, among whom was another Titulescu waif, Savel Radu-lescu, the man who tried to conceal the Goring proposals, and a smallgroup of Generals like Sanatescu, Steflea, and Racovitza, were also keep-ing direct or indirect contact with the enemy . These were the politicians,diplomats and officers who had prepared the act of treason of August23, 1944, taking advantage of the personal anti-Antonescu rancor andimpressionability of young King Michael, and using him as chief pro-tagonist in the drama of the false armistice .

Not only had no armistice been signed, but none had even been nego-tiated. The emissaries of Maniu, Bratianu, Petrescu, and Patrascanuhad received no answer to the demands presented to representatives ofthe Western Powers in Cairo and elsewhere, other than the informationthat those demands had been transmitted to the respective Governments,and the repeated injunction to direct themselves to the Soviet author-ities . And it was in Moscow, three weeks after the misleading announce-ment, that the text of the armistice convention was presented to ourdelegation to be signed on the dotted line . In that three-week intervalthe Soviet Armies spilled over Rumanian territory, killing, raping, steal-ing, devastating, and capturing the deceived Rumanian troops .

Pamfil Seicaru, a well known writer and an eyewitness of the catastro-phe, commented as follows :

This insane decision [announcing a non-existent armistice] has had as itsfirst effect a dramatic confusion on the front . Conforming to the instructionof General Racovitza, commander of the troops in operation, who was thechief element of the defeatist conspiracy, delegates of our military units

eral Steflea, and General RacovitzA took command of all Rumanian troops operatingat that moment. Both belonged to the capitulation conspiracy. General Steflea ap-peared as a witness for the prosecution at the trial of Marshal Antonescu, and ac-cused his former chief of as much as he could . He also explained how he had, fromthe beginning, as Chief of the General Staff, sabotaged military operations .

Posthumous Triumph / 253

made contact with the commanders of the respective Soviet sector . All theofficers had heard on the radio the King's speech announcing the conclusionof an armistice. It is difficult to find in our vocabulary the word that couldqualify such an act of deception directed against the army that had foughtfor more than three years, carrying its glorious standards as far as theCrimea, the Volga, and the Caucasus . An act of treason without precedentin the history of any country! A King betraying his army into the hands ofthe enemy!After a moment of disorientation, the Russian commanders asked for

Moscow's orders . Moscow's answer was in accordance with the truth : Noconvention of armistice had been signed . Consequently the Rumanian unitsmust be surrounded, disarmed and captured . After two days the total num-ber of prisoners was more than 175,000. . . .

And says Mr . Prost, also an eye-witness :

As long as the armistice was not signed the liberators kept on behavinglike enemies. They surrounded and captured the Rumanian regiments,which believed that they were facing friendly troops . . . . The Russian ar-mies lived on what they found on their way . They looted the farms, thestores, the warehouses. One of the first cars stolen was that of the MinisterPresident. The looting did not cease with the armistice, and for months itwas wise not to go home too late in order not to be robbed or left dead onthe streets .

Concerning the execution of the clauses of the armistice, the govern-ments of London and Washington relied entirely on the Soviets . Thoseclauses not only authorized but invited the Soviets to interfere in Ruma-nia's inner affairs. . . . An international instrument approved by theUnited States and Great Britain had abandoned Rumania to the whimsand orders of the Soviet Union . It was learned that this had been so decidedin Teheran December 1943 . And it explained why the Cairo conversationsdid not lead to any results . . . .The Rumanians did not realize immediately the abyss to which they had

been brought. Not even the text of the armistice convention opened theeyes of all. A decree of August 31 declared that the Constitution of 1923was in effect again . The old political parties believed that they would beable to start anew their usual pother . In fact, the Teheran conference con-demned Rumania to be a vassal state of the Soviet Union . A new historystarted for her as for all the countries of eastern Europe, abandoned, as shewas, to the imperialistic ambitions of the Kremlin . All those countries wereto have the same fate, whatever their policy had been in the past, whatevertheir attitude had been in the recent conflict .3

The public declaration of Niculescu-Buzesti, who had meanwhile beenappointed Foreign Minister by the defeatist clique, showed the indif-ference with which it considered the ordeal of the treacherously dis-armed troops and of the Rumanian people :

I Destin de la Roumanie, p . 301 . Italics added.

254 / The Suicide of Europe

The Soviet Army has been received in Rumania in the most friendlyspirit . We realize that in the period of the present military operationssome unimportant incidents will necessarily occur . We do not intend toascribe to them any significance. Those are episodic incidents without anyimportance . The Rumanian Government is convinced that all that has beenagreed to with the USSR will be completely honored .

Those who witnessed with such imperturbability the capture and thedeportation of hundreds of thousands of Rumanians, the murders, therapes, and the plunders, had long before taken the necessary precautionsin order to assure their own welfare in more peaceful surroundingswhen the moment of the unavoidable catastrophe, which they had pro-voked, arrived. Millions of dollars seized from the state treasury hadbeen sent to their personal accounts in Switzerland and other places .We will soon find them in various Western countries, where they wereallowed to take comfortable refuge by the Communist authorities, whohad probably cleverly anticipated their disruptive activities among theRumanian anti-Communist exiles .

It is easy to understand the indignation of General Chirnoaga ex-pressed in a letter to Mme . Basdevant, a great admirer of the turncoatcoterie, reproduced in his book Un Chapitre d'Histoire Roumaine :

Imagine, Madame, responsible French politicians asking the Germans tostart a strong offensive in order to destroy the French Armyl If such an actwere possible, what would be the name by which it would be called by thelaws for the defense of the French state?

In the night of August 23, King Michael announced on the radio thatan armistice had been signed with the Russian Army . In fact the armisticewas not signed until September 12, in Moscow, where King Michael's en-voys were submitted to the greatest humiliations . They had to wait fifteendays before being allowed to learn the conditions imposed by the USSR,which they had to sign without any discussions .

During those fifteen days [in fact three weeks had passed since the timeof King Michael's misleading information] the Soviet Armies occupied thewhole of Rumania, preventing thereby any reaction to the conditions ofthe armistice before it was signed . As there was no armistice, all the Ru-manian troops on the Moldavian and Bessarabian fronts, who had laid downtheir weapons in conforming to King Michael's order, were taken prisonerby the Russians and led into capitivity.

It was therefore a capitulation and not an armistice . Here is a King whohands over his Army to the enemyl In what country could be found such achief of state? The Soviet Order of Victory was conferred on him by theSoviet Marshal Tolbukhin in Stalin's name . A sad honor, that of being hon-ored by the mortal enemy of your own country .

YES, CONTRARY TO THE MEANING AND PURPOSE OF RUMANIA'S HISTORY, TOSAVE WESTERN CIVILIZATION FROM THE BARBARIC EASTERN HORDES, AND TOTHE UNANIMOUS WILL OF HER PEOPLE, THE SOVIET TROOPS WERE ALLOWED

Posthumous Triumph / 255

TO PASS ACROSS OUR TERRITORY, AS IN THE EARLY THIRTIES TITULESCU ANDKING CAROL HAD PROMISED THEY WOULD BE ALLOWED TO DO . And since then,Europe is no more and will never again be allowed to be what it had beenfor three thousand years and more. Western Civilization in a new and de-graded form, has shrunk in Europe to a few fringe states . It has disap-peared almost completely from Asia and Africa with a rush and a swift-ness no one could have imagined . As for America, from where thevanguard of the apocalyptical cavalry erupted in 1918, misinformationof the public and treacherous education of the youth are conditioningand preparing her for the biggest and final triumph of those dark forceswhich engineered both the Bolshevik Revolution and World War II .

CHAPTER

XXXIV

When Only Honor Could Still Be Saved

On August 28, 1944, I left Copenhagen in a German militaryplane and arrived the same day amidst the rubble of what had beenBerlin. Beholding the pulverized city, I thought of the loving care withwhich Hitler had started its embellishment and of his remarkable offerto reconstruct, at Germany's expense and according to foreign govern-ments' wishes, all the embassies and legations, relocating them in a specialresidential district. That project, by the beginning of the war, had alreadyreached substantial realization. I thought of how conflicting this was withHitler's alleged premeditated aggressive intentions against the WesternPowers .

At the Hotel Adlon, I yielded the room that had been reserved for meto the widow of a Danish volunteer who had been killed on the EasternFront. This lady, wiser than Schallburg's sister-in-law, had left Copen-hagen in time . From the hotel, with a heavy valise in my hand, I wentgroping through the total Berlin blackout, along the unrecognizablestreets, seeking the Rumanian Legation . I was still far from my goalwhen a swarm of bombers, which I had heard so often passing nightlyover our heads in Denmark, reached Berlin at the usual hour and startedits routine carpet bombing. It revived my faith in modern ballistic ac-curacy since the last time I had seen the RAF operating . They had killedby mistake ninety-three children and some teachers in a girls' school ina Copenhagen suburb. While I was in Berlin the bombers visited usevery night very punctually . With the same punctuality and with Ger-manic calm, men and women crawled out of their night caverns everymorning and entered their day grottoes for their uninterrupted work .

At the Auswartige Amt I was told the latest news from Bucharest .After the arrest of Marshal Antonescu and his delivery to the Commu-nists, the new regime had immediately broken its relations with Ger-

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When Only Honor Could Still Be Saved / 257

many and declared its alliance with Soviet Russia and the Western Pow-ers. The German Army had started its retreat, pursued and leisurelyharassed by Rumanian troops. General Gerstenberg, Commander of theGerman Air Force in that theater of operations, had taken in retaliation,the brutal and stupid initiative of bombing the center of Bucharest, withthe foolhardy idea of destroying the Royal Palace and King Michael ifhe happened to be there. Michael and his worthy retinue, of course, hadleft days before for safer quarters.'

I found more complete information in Vienna, where with great emo-tion and after years of separation I met Horia Sima, the Legion'sCommander, and the vanguard of the four hundred Legionaries liber-ated from the Dachau and Buchenwald concentration camps . The daythe Legionaries in Buchenwald were informed that their internment hadended and while they were jubilantly preparing to leave, the camp wasviolently, for reasons unknown, bombarded by the RAF. Many inmateswere wounded and killed ; among the latter was the young and innocentPrincess Mafalda of Italy .

From the moment Rumania entered the war, despite our justified re-sentment against the Antonescu regime, we had scrupulously avoidedcreating any difficulties for his Government . The Legionaries who en-tered the battle from the beginning, and those who were allowed to joinit only later when the disciplinary battalions were formed with the in-mates of the prisons, strived, as every unit commander could testify, tobe models of spirit, endurance and courage . We had now to decide ifRumania's cause asked us to adopt the same attitude towards the newrulers in Bucharest . The information we had already received and thatwhich we were receiving daily helped us to make up our minds rapidly .

For a long time, we in Vienna could not understand how entire Ru-manian divisions were being captured and taken as prisoners to Russiaand Siberia, seeing that a convention of armistice had been signed . Itwas not until September 13 when the signature of the real conventionwas announced from Moscow that we understood the treachery . The So-viet offensive against the Rumanian front, urgently demanded by ourpolitical parties, by the Visoianu-Buzesti group of diplomats, and byKing Michael himself, had started August 14, 1944 . Despite the feloniousactivities of one of two Generals like Racovitza and Steflea, our troopskept fighting their retreat toward the country's boundaries with a stub-bornness that did not correspond with the conspirators' computations .

1 Truth forces me to mention that Gerstenberg had been provoked by a treacherousmove by the new Rumanian Military Command-the Command of the false ArmisticeConvention. An understanding had been reached between the King and Gerstenbergconcerning the date of the withdrawal of the German Air Force from Rumania . Twenty-four hours before the expiration of the agreed term, the Rumanian anti-aircraft artil-lery opened fire against the withdrawing German planes .

258 / The Suicide of Europe

They had therefore asked King Michael himself to break their resistance .The people and the army had been cheated ; both abhorred the new

masters that the betrayal of their leaders had given them. When in Feb-ruary 1945, under the protection of the Soviet bayonets, the CommunistParty, which in Rumania had never numbered more than four hundredpeople, the majority of them of foreign origin, tried to parade in thestreets of Bucharest, the demonstrators were forced to disperse under theangry jeers and the blows of the incensed public. In November of thesame year on the occasion of Saint Michael's festivities, under a fullfledged Communist Government and in similar circumstances, Commu-nist manifestations were fought by the Rumanian people all over thecountry. The bloody scuffles ended with more than twenty dead in Buch-arest alone .

The Soviet troops had reached Bucharest on August 28, 1944 . Fourdays later the political parties in an acute crisis of euphoria wentthrough the gesture of reinstating the Constitution of 1923 . How couldthe leaders of these parties believe, even for a moment, unless they werecomplete fools, that the Communist masters of our country would everabandon it again to a regime of liberty and justice? The true story ofthe Katyn carnage was public knowledge . What had occurred in theBaltic States in 1939-1940 was known to everybody : the whole of the in-telligentsia, both civilian and military, and more than one-third of thepeasantry, had disappeared, either liquidated on the spot or transportedto extermination camps . The same thing had happened in Poland. More-over, what nobody could have ignored or forgotten in Bucharest was themass liquidation and the mass deportation of the Rumanian populationof Bessarabia and Bucovina, which started immediately after the occu-pation of the two provinces by the Soviets in 1940 .

Whether there were really some sincere illusions among the politicalleaders, we did not know. In any case, a sense of realization must havecome very quickly when the same methods of annihilation started to beapplied in conquered Rumania. Hundreds of thousands of inhabitantsof Bessarabia, Transylvania, and Bucovina were herded like cattle, with-out any consideration for family bonds or other ties, and taken away .When, through emissaries and through British and American representa-tives in Bucharest, Maniu, and Bratianu complained to Roosevelt andChurchill about those inhuman methods, they received from the twoWestern leaders the answer that these matters had been agreed uponbetween them and Stalin, and that the Soviets had been authorized touse slavework as a part of the war indemnities to which they were en-titled . Vae victis!

On September 25, 1944, Maniu and Bratianu abandoned the NationalDemocratic Front they had formed with the Socialists and the Commu-

When Only Honor Could Still Be Saved / 259

nists . General Sanatescu, a Palace man and the Minister President, un-der pressure from Soviet bayonets and menaced by the extremist mem-bers of his Government, was forced to complete it with still more Marxistelements . Terrified by the situation and by his responsibilities, he yieldedthe Presidency to the more forceful General Radescu, who had himselfplayed an important part in the complot that had put Rumania intoCommunist hands . Radescu tried to adopt at least verbally a more en-ergetic attitude before the growing exigencies of Andrei Vyshinsky andhis Rumanian accomplices . After a speech in which he went so far as totalk about "people without God and without country," Radescu felt themoment had come to take refuge in the British Legation . He appeareda few months later in Portugal . Radescu once eliminated, Vyshinsky ex-ploded into the Royal Palace, banged his fist, banged the doors, andforced subdued King Michael to appoint Communist Groza in lieu ofthe evanescent Generals .

The calvary of the Rumanian people was to increase in direct propor-tion to the Kremlin's triumphs in the diplomatic international arena .After Yalta and Potsdam : San Francisco, where Soviet Russia, by thevery fact of her admission into a community of nations supposed tohave been formed to defend the rights of men and of nations, was excul-pated ipso facto of all her past, present and future crimes . After SanFrancisco : the Moscow conference of December 1945 and the Byrnes be-trayal of Rumania by unfathomable stupidity, with the mock electionsof 1946 as a consequence . After Moscow: the Paris Peace Conferencewhere Rumania and ten other European countries were sentenced tolifetime penal servitude . Finally : King Michael's shotgun abdication .

A short time later Maniu, Bratianu, and many of those who had takenpart in Rumania's affairs on the pro-Soviet side both before and afterthe capitulation, would be in Communist prisons . King Michael hadlong before handed over Marshal Antonescu to his Communist enemiesand condoned his execution after Antonescu's condemnation by a Com-munist tribunal in Bucharest . King Michael could have prevented thisexecution if he had exercised his right of mercy-a thing we do notdoubt he would have liked to do .But in Vienna, by December 1944, we had already decided to consider

the King and all those who surrounded him as the prisoners of thearmed forces of an enemy government ; to consider therefore that Ru-mania had neither King nor Government and that the persons whoappeared in the successive Ministerial formations were, some of them,plain Communist agents, and the others terrorized or impotent Ruma-nians who were functioning in the various positions they occupied underthe menace or even the fact of corporal coercion .Faced with a situation without precedent in the history of the Ruma-

260 / The Suicide of Europe

nian people, we decided that it was our duty, as still free Rumanians,to try what we knew our enslaved compatriots would want us to try :to raise again the flag that their inept and terrorized leaders haddropped at the enemy's first bidding. On December 10, 1944, therefore,we gathered non-Legionaries and Legionaries in the Palace Lobkowitzin Vienna and formed the Rumanian National Government whose firstact was to proclaim immediately the existence of the Corps of RumanianVolunteers, the organization of which had actually started two monthsearlier, and which would continue the fight against the oppressors ofour country.In Vienna I had found an old acquaintance, Minister Altenburg, who

had represented his Government on the committee investigating theHungarian treatment of the Rumanians in Transylvania, and who nowrepresented it before the Rumanian National Government in exile. Itwas Altenburg who informed me that three Rumanian officers hadcrossed the German line and wanted to reach Vienna . One of them boremy name, he said, and the commanding officer of the sector where thosethree persons had been held wanted to know what we knew about them .We knew a lot. One of them was my son Elie-Vlad, who, I had always

been certain, would do everything in his power to join our undertaking .His companions were Dr . Bulbuc, who was to be assassinated a year laterin Italy, and a young lieutenant whom I shall call Lieutenant X, notknowing if he is still alive . Lieutenant X, modest, calm and valiant,crossed the lines several times on special missions . Constantin Stoica-nescu, another comrade whose confident, warm, and generous nature hadso often comforted us in hours of greatest need, had already perished,victim of his courage and his spirit of initiative, on a mission similar tothe missions of my son that, had it been successful, might have changedradically the course of events on that part of the Eastern Front .The bombardment of Vienna was continuous and intense, although

not to be compared with the similar fireworks in Berlin . The city wasreceiving two visitations a day, a British attack in the morning, an Amer-ican one at night . The guests at the Hotel Imperial, where we werelodged, were consequently meeting twice a day in the hotel bunker, oneof the most appreciated in the city, which for never quite explained rea-sons was called "Goring's bunker ." As my son, for certain reasons, didnot want to be recognized each time he returned from the front, withor without the news we were expecting, we generally chose the hour ofthe morning raids for our constitutional walks in the neighboring gar-dens. Once, while we were sitting there on a bench, we saw a lady witha heavy valise in her hands walking in our direction . Believing that shehad just emerged from an underground station and did not know whereto find shelter, we hastened to offer to take her into the hotel's cata-

When Only Honor Could Still Be Saved / 261combs, not failing to mention that they were among the best available .To our surprise she answered in good Rumanian and rather briskly : "Iam not such a fool . I refuse, for the life of me, to bury myself in thoserat traps. Each time those villains bomb us, I come out here with thisvalise and feel safer than anywhere else ." How right she was was dem-onstrated that same morning when a more inquisitive missile penetratedas far as the jockey Club cellar and killed nearly every person there,among whom were some of our friends from our Vienna heydays.

On October 25, 1944, our troops, following cautiously rather thanpushing the retreating German divisions, had reached the location ofour old borders as they existed before the Vienna Arbitration . The casu-alties on both sides had been extremely light up until then, none of theadversaries fighting with much conviction . What happened with ourdivisions afterwards, when they were asked to conquer Central Europefor the Soviets, is another story about which the Gafencu-Visoianu cliqueboasted impudently in their memorandum to the Peace Conference inParis .

Our divisions participated in 16 big battles and 367 minor encounters,advancing for more than 1,000 kilometers as far as the center of Bohemia,crossing 12 chains of mountains in winter time, in regions completely de-void of lodgings and transportation . They liberated 2,832 localities, in-cluding 555 cities . They captured 103,243 prisoners. Their casualties wereextremely heavy: 5,078 officers, 4,984 non-commissioned officers, 159,789 sol-diers . A total of 169,882 casualties of which 111,379 were deaths .

The Rumanian National Government, on the other hand, was of theopinion that we ought to prevent, at any price, the sacrifice of Ruma-nian blood for the "liberation" of Mr. Benes and of his country. If thisblood were to be shed, it should be with one purpose only : in a last anddesperate attempt to eject the Soviet troops from the national territory,to push them at least as far as possible toward their own borders inorder to win as much time as possible, in the expectation of a politicalor military change that would be provoked or facilitated by just this at-tempt. If this project, which we had carefully studied and prepared,were to be abandoned because of the malfeasance of others-as wasfinally the case-we could at least try to save the honor of an army thatuntil the time of Michael I had never broken its pledges and neverturned its weapons against its own allies and battle comrades .

In no case would the division we were forming, from all the Legion-aries who were in Germany and all the other Rumanian volunteers bebrought to fight against Rumanian troops as happened tragically inNorth Africa and in Asia Minor with de Gaulle's soldiers . Therefore,our first project having been abandoned because of sabotage by some

262 / The Suicide of Europe

Wehrmacht Generals (who saw in the possibility of an important victoryon the Eastern Front only the occasion of a useless prolongation of awar that they considered already lost), we sent out troops, unit by unitas soon as their training permitted, to the northern part of the front inPomerania, along the Oder. The remains of Gheorghe-Stephan, theWandering Prince of Moldavia who died in a Pomeranian castle, hadbeen piously brought back to Moldavia by his granddaughter, AnnaSturdza, the wife of Prince John Gregory Ghyka of Walachia . Whatpious hands will ever bring back to their beloved country the bones ofthe Rumanian volunteers who died there, or who died in Siberian prisoncamps?Our division was training in a camp northwest of Vienna, com-

manded, incidentally, by an old German officer named Colonel Ludwig,a man of strict military courtesy but with a grumpy nature acquired ina lifetime of soldiering, of which a good part had been spent exchang-ing blows with enemies of all descriptions . One night, in the room thathe had put at my disposal, I heard a timid knock at my door. As itopened, I recognized the man entering as Petrea a private well over hisforties, a mountaineer of Neamt, one of the most picturesque of ourCarpathian provinces .

"Petrea, how did you happen to land here with us?""Well, Sir, I saw others coming and I came with them .""How do you pass the time of day when you are not drilling?""I sing, Sir, I sing .""You sing, Petrea, in what way?""Just like this, Sir, just like this ."And Petrea drew from one of his pockets a nice oval piece of birch

bark, not bigger than half of the heel of his hand, and started fixing itbetween his teeth .

Here I suppose I owe some explanation to my readers .Those who have not partaken of the magic and the color of the

sounds that our village virtuosos can conjure out of such a bit of barkcan hardly believe it. As for the melodies produced and improvised,they are always of the nostalgic nature of our doinas, perennial accom-paniments to the pastoral life which has been the fount of our folkloresince the dawn of our history. These melodies are equally adapted tofour fundamental themes : love, love of nature, legend, and heroism .Melodic doinas started to pour from Petrea's lips, who had knocked atmy door just to shower them on some Rumanian's understanding ears .

Petrea stopped :"Sir, I have another bit of birch that I have brought with me from

Neamt. It is from a thunderstruck birch, the best there is ."Then Petrea extracted another bit of bark from another pocket, and

When Only Honor Could Still Be Saved / 263

our dreams and longing absorbed us again . So entranced were we thatwe did not hear the door open. I was suddenly aware that the grumpyand irascible Colonel was sitting on the bunk near me, listening withthe same rapture as I to Petrea's incantations .

Petrea, where are you now? Prisoner in Soviet Russia, back in yourdear mountains, or in that other and happier world where your patronwould not have, I am certain, any difficulty in admitting you? Wher-ever it is that you dwell, I am sure that you are not without that bit ofbark in your pocket .The atmosphere in Vienna grew more defeatist every day . The three

sancta sanctorum of the Viennese, the opera house, Saint Stephan'sKirche, and Frau Sacher's hotel, had been seriously damaged by Alliedbombing. And enough was enough . We could see the moment comingwhen we would be the only ones in the bunker of the Hotel Imperialwho still believed in victory . Meanwhile our volunteers were fightingin Pomerania, and we saw with pride our soldiers and officers men-tioned in the dispatches .General Chirnoaga in his letter to Mme. Basdevant expresses his aston-

ishment that in her book Terres Roumaines contre Vents et Mareesthis constant slanderer of the Legionary Movement fails even to mentionthe existence either of the Rumanian National Government in exile orof this last military effort of the Rumanian people against the conquerorsof their country .

In your book you do not mention at all the constitution and the activi-ties of the Rumanian National Government presided over by Horia Sima .. . . From August 23, Rumania had ceased to be a sovereign and independ-ent country ; the Government's decisions were influenced or dictated byMoscow. No independent Rumanian Government would have incurred thedishonour of arresting Marshal Antonescu in the precinct of the Royal Pal-ace and handing him over to Soviet agent Bodnaras .Rumanians who happened to be in Germany and Austria formed there-

fore a Government, symbol of the aspirations of the Rumanian people . . .and formed an infantry division with which the Vienna Government con-tinued the fight until Germany's capitulation .

General Chirnoaga's astonishment is worth some commentary . Mme .Basdevant kept very "good" company and their numbers were great .None of the Legionary Movement's professional slanderers who tookthe trouble to express themselves in books or newspapers-and they arenot few-have ever mentioned the Rumanian National Government orthe Rumanian Corps of Volunteers . The explanation of this silence is tobe found in the facts of the situation: in what was occurring in Bucha-rest, and in what was occurring in Vienna at that time . In Bucharestthere was a handful of usurpers, blind and deaf to the distress and as-

264 / The Suicide of Europe

piration of their nation; in Vienna, Rumanians who had forgotten anydisagreement of political or other nature formed around a Legionarycore, although far from their people, felt united with it and acted in fullaccord with their aspirations in trying to eradicate the shame of thecapitulation, not by the customary and uncommendable methods of the"resistants," but by a last and heroic military effort .How could even the most imaginative calumniator find in such a

situation a weapon against Codreanu's Iron Guard, against the Le-gionaries?

Our enemy could have only one solution to this perplexing problem :to strike, through the imposture o f silence, the story of this last andheroic military effort from the history of Rumania .

CHAPTER

XXXV

Hungarian Intermezzo

Vienna and the whole of Austria were slowly filling withRussian refugees who had followed the German Armies in their retreat .In Vienna I met some of General Andrei A. Vlasov's officers, leaders ofa Russian anti-Communist Army of about 400,000 soldiers, men withoutany special sympathy for Germany and still less for the National Social-ist regime, who for about two years had asked to be permitted to try toliberate their country from the odious Soviet tyranny without havingbeen allowed by Hitler to do so . All those soldiers and their officerswere dishonorably handed over to Stalin by the British and UnitedStates Governments and High Commands, against the stipulations ofthe Geneva Convention and the laws and usages of war. They werevictims of one of the greatest of war crimes, a crime about which allnewspapers, magazines, historians, and commentators still keep a deepsilence . The soldiers were mowed down to the last man by Soviet ma-chine guns. The officers were all hanged . Directly responsible for thisatrocity were the President of the United States and the Prime Ministerof Great Britain, without whose consent or orders such a violation ofinternational, human and Divine laws would never have been possible .

While in Poland for a short trip, I had the opportunity to ascertainthat the much talked about Ostwall (East Wall) was no more than aninterminable moat, not very deep, over which any armored unit couldhave managed a prompt crossing in less than an hour .

The battle was every day moving nearer to Vienna . I found the front,on my return, at Sopron on the Austro-Hungarian border . Among thosewho formed or surrounded the Rumanian National Government, andamong our fighting forces there, the possibility of defeat had not pro-voked any defections (with the exception of one, which we hasten toforget). General Chirnoaga and his officers maintained themselves in the

265

266 / The Suicide of Europe

position that, as soldiers and Rumanians, they felt compelled to adoptwhen they had seen their country abandoned to the enemy; their com-rades and their troops betrayed to captivity; Marshal Antonescu, theCommander-in-Chief of the Army who had triumphantly carried ourwaving colors from the Prut to the Caucasus, handed over by his Kingand his Government to the Communists ; and a Rumanian Prime Min-ister forced to take hasty refuge at the British Legation . General Chir-noaga is still with us, a cherished and venerated figure who occupies inour hearts the same place as did General Cantacuzene and GeneralPetrovicescu .

We had decided that a visit to Baron Kemeny, the Foreign Ministerin the Hungarian Arrow Cross Government of Ferenc Sz'alasi, would giveus an opportunity for a useful exchange of views now that our twocountries had been totally engulfed in the poisonous Communist flood .I do not know why the German authorities, who arranged this inter-view for me, asked that a member of Altenburg's staff be present at themeeting. My intentions were definite: to consider with my Hungarianinterlocutor the possibility of a radical revolutionary solution to thecenturies-old rivalry between the two nations, whose quarrels through-out their history from Charles Robert and Neagoe Bassarab, from Stefanthe Great and Matthias Corvinus, from Michael the Valiant and theBithories up to our times, had always hampered tragically their abilityto resist the attacks of their common enemy : yesterday the Turks, todaythe Soviets.Our trip from Vienna to Soviet-invaded Hungary recalled to my mind

a relevant episode of the time I spent in Budapest as Secretary to ourLegation. On that occasion, at dinner at Admiral Horthy's residence,Kanya, the Secretary General of the Hungarian Foreign Office, hadrather tactlessly interrupted a discussion I was having with my neigh-bors about horses and horsemanship by declaring that there was now noreason to talk of horses in Hungary, as the Rumanian troops had takenthem all with them when leaving Hungarian territory. The lady whowas at my side kindly tried to restore the up to then prevailing harmonyat our corner of the table by reminding Kanya that those troops hadalso cleaned Hungary of Bela Kun's Communist vermin. A young offi-cer who was near at hand retorted immediately : "Yes, this is true, andwe Hungarians are grateful people . We will not rest until we haverendered the Rumanians the same service ."

After the official exchange of greetings, a visit to the troops and lunchwith their officers, I spent within sound of the rumbling and raspingclamor of the nearby battle a night of unforgettable discussions withBaron Kemeny, my Hungarian colleague. In the old mansion where wewere lodged, everything, from the graceful elderly lady who was our

Hungarian Intermezzo / 267

hostess to the hunting trophies and family portraits hanging on thewalls and the whiskers a la Francois Joseph of the elderly majordomo,was still an unscathed part of a world that was crumbling around us .

As if by a miracle, Kemeny and I found ourselves thinking along thesame lines, profoundly convinced of the same necessities, prepared, ifin spite of all God gave us victory, to make the same decisions. It wasKemeny who opened the way to this comforting exchange of ideas anddreams by telling me that after the Vienna Arbitration Ferenc Sz'alasi,Kemeny's Prime Minister, who happened to be in Cluj-the capital ofTransylvania, where years before I had, as Governor, tried to create evena minimum of understanding between Rumanians and Hungarians-asked an assembly of his partisans to observe with him a minute ofsilence in memory of Corneliu Codreanu, "with whom," he said, "wecould perhaps have found another solution to the problem of our twocountries."

Szdlasi, Hungary's rightful Prime Minister, and Baron Kemeny, Hun-gary's rightful Foreign Minister, were handed over by the British forcesto the new Communist Hungarian Government . Both were hanged ;and from those days when hangmen were the pets and bedfellows ofnewspaper men, columnists and press photographers, I had in my pos-session a picture of Szalasi's hanging. A priest is trying to reach SzAlasi'slips with a cross; Szilasi leans as far forward as his position permits tokiss the sacred and beloved symbol . A crowd of unbelievably subhumanbeings brutally pushes its way to separate the priest from the man whostands with the rope around his neck, trying to deprive Szalasi of thislast consolation . What a fitting frontispiece to an epoch where we haveseen the mention of God and the singing of Christmas carols banishedby law from the public schools of powerful, formerly Christian countries .

CHAPTER

XXXVI

The End and After

Our still robust optimism was based on the spirit of disciplineand on the incomparable qualities of the German soldier, to whomnothing seemed to be impossible as long as he was led by chiefs whoremained faithful to the old German tradition of military honor, offidelity to their Command, and of fighting to the last man . This optimismwas also based on the conviction deeply rooted in us, as it is still rooted,that Divine Wisdom would not permit the ultimate triumph of thediabolical forces that had seized Russia in their claws twenty-seven yearsbefore, forces responsible for the greatest distress, the greatest massacres,the greatest terror inflicted on the greatest number of victims known tohuman history .

The battle of the Ardennes, the last clout of the dying lion, seemedfor a moment to bolster our hopes, but not even after the crossing ofthe Rhine by the Allied Forces did we consider a German victory, aGerman battle of the Marne, impossible .Concerning the Eastern front, we had become accustomed to its

proximity and quasi-stability in the central Austrian sector, comparedto what was happening in its northern part where our troops were fight-ing. We were, therefore, painfully surprised when Altenburg informedus that the Rumanian National Government was to be evacuated. Weleft the Hotel Imperial in a big autobus en route for Alt-Aussee, a resortin Tirol. I felt rather ashamed when taking leave, at the Schutzstaffelcenter, of a young doctor in mathematics, an athlete with Iron Crosseson his breast, who asked me half-jokingly, "Are you going? You leaveus to fight alone?" Some weeks later I read in the Western papers thatthe last of that handful of heroes who defended Vienna to the end hadbeen executed by the enemy "because by a useless resistance they hadprovoked considerable losses and destructions ."

268

The End and After / 269We spent Easter of 1945 in the bus on our way to Alt-Aussee, where

we found that crowds of refugees had replaced the tourists of yore . Fromthere we finally dispersed, each of us hurrying toward his destiny, tomeet in Paris about two years later-except those who fell on the way,or those who, like my son, were fighting the same enemy on far-awaybattlefields. The second week in April I was in a train on my way toBerlin. Normally a ten-hour journey, it took us four days to cover thedistance because of the detours and stops caused by enemy bombing . Atthe gates of Berlin there was a surprise for almost everybody . All able-bodied men were asked to leave the cars ; each was given a rifle and sentto join the ranks of those who were defending the approaches of thecapital . I was left with the women and the invalids .There followed three nights at the Hotel Adlon . In the hotel's air

raid shelter, where we spent a good part of our time, I regularly metDegrelle, the Commander of the heroic Legion Valonne, and the GrandMufti of Jerusalem, a bright little chap who was always accompaniedby two big Valkyries. Some months after, when the newspapers an-nounced his escape from French captivity, they reported also that twoladies had left with him. I hoped that they were our two beauteousbunker companions .

I was taking my meals with a Rumanian officer who was waiting foran occasion, every day less probable, to pay a visit to our troops inPomerania. The fourth day, via Warnemunde and Gesder, and by whatcould have been the last boat to make the crossing, I was on my way toCopenhagen. Between Gesder and the Danish capital we were forcedto change trains ; a party of "resistants" had blown up a culvert . I re-membered the big bridge on the Drava, blown up by Yugoslav Partisans-the beginning and the end of a fragment of life, I thought.

But the real end was almost to come a little later. I did not find roomat the pension in Copenhagen where I usually stayed ; the landlady sentme to a hotel in a suburb of the city. When I returned to the pensiona few days later, after the arrival of the British and American troops,when impromptu executions had been replaced by a more orderly set-tling of old accounts, I learned that as soon as I had left, the pensionhad been invaded by a gang of the worst sort of resistance people who,with pistols drawn, searched for me everywhere, even under the beds ofall the guests. I wondered if a connection could be made between thisdaring "military expedition" and the friendly warning I had received afew months before from that thoughtful Director of the Press Depart-ment at the Danish Foreign Office .'

1 As in other countries the "resistance" in Denmark was composed of about twenty-five percent young patriots concerned by foreign occupation and seventy-five percentCommunists. As in other countries, it started its activities only after the beginning of

270 / The Suicide of Europe

It was the "Funeral March" of Die Gotterdammerung that announcedto us, the first of May 1945 the death of Hitler . Not being German, wedo not feel qualified to decide if Admiral Donitz was right or not whenhe declared on the radio that "the greatest hero of Germany's historyhas passed away." Nine words for which the justice of Nurnberg, thejustice of Katyn and Yalta, punished him with fifteen years of prison .But we are very much afraid that it was not only the death of the Ger-man Fiihrer that was broadcast to the world that evening but thecrepuscule of the old German gods . These were the gods who, as farback in the past as the realm of legend, had been the defenders ofEurope, this happy mote of land, this elected continent, father of allcivilizations, against Asiatic predatory and slaughtering invasions, thedefenders of this Europe already reduced today to a last stump un-protected and open to the onslaught of the barbarians .

The murderers of the last of Russia's Czars and of more than twentymillion of his subjects had been entrusted with the undermining anddestruction of all that three thousand years of pre-Christian and Chris-tian Civilization had bestowed on the world . From the appearance ofthe diabolical Communist entity up to the beginning of the EasternWar in 1941, and from the end of this war until now, no government,no head of state, no statesman had made it his purpose and his duty todefend at whatever price this irretrievable, unexpendable legacy againstthe enterprises of the Beast. Germany alone undertook it, accepting theterrible risks implied in this attempt . She failed, but I am proud toremember that Rumania, my country, contributed with all her youngforces, with all her faith and courage to this superhuman endeavour .

The day after the announced death of Hitler, I went to the seat of theGerman mission to shake hands for the last time with Dr. Werner Best .The building was surrounded by a pushing, menacing crowd throughwhich I had to navigate with difficulty and a certain amount of risk .At the gates two German soldiers were mounting guard in statuesqueimmobility; a young officer was contemplating with melancholy theagitated landscape . I found Best in his office, gazing through the windowwith crossed arms at the frenzied crowds . "And now what will you do?"he asked me. "I will wait," I told him . And I am still waiting for the dayof the resurrection of the civilized nations, to the consciousness of theirmission, the pride in their past, and their will to live .Dr. Best, like his predecessor Renthe-Fink, had done all that was in

the German-Soviet war . The whole idea was preposterous . The practical thing wouldhave been to prepare, as secretly as possible and in cooperation with the army, a gen-eral insurrection . Nothing like that happened in Denmark . The minor sabotages andthe reciprocal assassinations, generally between Danes, served only to keep the Germanauthorities on the alert against a surprise similar to that organized militarily in Warsawby the gallant Polish patriots .

The End and After / 271his power to sweeten for the Danish people the bitter pill of a foreignoccupation. It would have been much easier for him to do it without thecountermeasures the British Government was able to take in Denmark,as in almost all other occupied countries. In order to spare the Britishpopulation all the tragic and useless consequences of the so-called re-sistance, the British Government had given the strictest orders and ad-vice to the authorities and the population of the German occupiedChannel Islands not to provoke in any way the German authorities, butto try even to establish friendly relations with them. The same Govern-ment had adopted a diametrically different policy wherever a Britishpopulation was not concerned . British agents and British-suppliedweapons formed the core of the terrorist organizations whose mission itwas to provoke the chain reaction of sabotage, murder, retaliation andcounter-retaliation, whose victims were so seldom, in Denmark as else-where, the perpetrators of those outrages .

My new Danish exile lasted two years . In this period of forced in-activity, when I could not obtain a visa for any other country, I watchedwith lacerating pangs the occurrence of all that I had foreseen andforetold in my reports to the King, to the Prime Ministers, and to theMinisters of Foreign Affairs, in my verbal and written interventions withso many of our political factors-a consequence of the foreign policywe were following, directed not by specific Rumanian interests but bythe never-mentioned influence of never-named forces .I watched, in this period, the disappearance of Rumania from the

world of independent states . I saw the Rumanian nation submitted to aregime of physical and spiritual degradation without parallel in humanhistory. While in Copenhagen I received the news of King Michael'sdecoration with the Soviet Order of Victory, and that of the executionof Marshal Antonescu with the consent of his King. I took note of thehypocritical maneuvers of Truman, Attlee, Bevin, and Byrnes, whounder the appearance of an honest resistance to Soviet exigencies andthe pretext of the pursuit of a one-world dream were doing all that theycould to guarantee the continuity of the Teheran, Yalta, and Potsdaminiquities and to see this one-world "ideal" become finally a Communistempire. I heard there too, of the mock elections in Rumania, recognizedas valid by the Western Powers ; of the conferences in San Francisco andParis where eleven European nations with 130 million inhabitants werefed to the Nameless Beast ; of the unbelievable outrage of George C.Marshall's mission to China .We have not been lenient in the preceding pages with Marshal Anto-

nescu, with Iuliu Maniu or with Dinu Bratianu, the two latter the chiefsof the political parties, the National Peasant and the Liberal-the Con-servative Party had disappeared at the end of World War I, leaving in

272 / The Suicide of Europe

the moral structure of our political life a tragic emptiness-but we can-not refrain from manifesting our indignation for the way these threemen were abandoned in the hour of danger by so many of those whowere so evident at the time of the gratuities, the patronage, the porkbarrel and the important appointments . Not only did these hangers-onnot do anything for the defense of their chiefs and benefactors, but someof them were their accusers before the Communist courts .

We have hesitated a long while and we still are hesitant to place KingMichael's case in the same category as that of the deserters and thetraitors. We have withheld judgment on Michael not only in relationto the fate of the three statesmen, but also in relation to his attitudetoward his people, to whom he owed everything, and who had the rightto expect from him even the sacrifice so many crowned heads have madewith majestic serenity . Even after the publication of the text of the King'sabdication, a unique document to the best of our knowledge in the his-tory of the downfall of monarchies, the Legionary Movement continuedto admit that the King could still be a "flag" of convergence and unionamong Rumanian exiles, and a symbol for the day, much yearned for,of the fight for Rumania's liberation . We had decided to forget the pastfor the sake of union among Rumanians and the fight for Rumania'sindependence. Many Rumanians, including the writer of these pages,were prepared to forget the past also because they were convinced thatthe monarchic form of government that ruled the Rumanian nationwithout interruption for more than seven centuries was the best adaptedto this nation's character and needs . The text of King Michael's abdica-tion will show how much we had, and still have, to forget .

MIHAI [Michael] the FIRSTby the Grace of God and the will of the people

KING OF RUMANIATo all those present and those to come : greetings .

Deep political, economic and social changes have occurred in the life ofthe Rumanian State, which have created new relations between the princi-pal factors of the life of the state .

Those relations do not correspond anymore with the conditions estab-lished in the Fundamental Pact, the Country's Constitution . They demanda complete and fundamental change .

In view of that situation, in perfect accord with the responsible elementof the country, knowing also my responsibilities, I consider that the mo-narchic institution no longer corresponds to the present conditions of ourstate's life; it represents a serious hindrance on the way to Rumania's prog-ress. [Italics added .]

Consequently, fully conscious of the step I am taking for the benefit ofthe Rumanian people :

I ABDICATEfor Me and my followers to the throne, giving up for Me, and for them,all prerogatives I have exercised as King of Rumania .

I leave to the Rumanian people the liberty of choosing its new form ofState

Given in Bucharesttoday December 80, 1947

MIHAI

History tells us of many emperors or kings who have been stripped oftheir crown or have been killed on the steps of their throne . We neverread however of a monarch who, before leaving or dying, declared thatthe monarchic regime represented an obstacle to the progress of hiscountry. After all, the right to decide about such matters belonged tothe Rumanian people ; all the more so since the hands into which Ru-mania was abandoned were those of the most cruel tyrants . The goodand faithful Rumanian population had shown its feelings toward thegrandson of King Ferdinand and Queen Marie in the September 1946insurrection on Saint Michael's day, the King's own saint's day, whichfilled Bucharest's streets with dead and wounded .

Despite the act of abdication and all that had happened before, wedecided to grant the young exiled King the chance for a future thatmight have permitted him to make up for past errors, the chanceto promote and guarantee unity among the exiled Rumanians and be-tween Rumanian and other national exiles, to work with them in theirfight against the indifference and the ill will of powerful Western politi-cal factors, to prepare with them for the supreme effort, even at therisk of ending like the other Mihai of the Rumanian past, who afteralmost four hundred years is remembered by the Rumanian people asMihai the Valiant .

It took us some time to understand that King Michael in his exile,as in his Palace, was the prisoner of the same camarilla, of the men whoinsisted that a powerful enemy offensive be directed against their owncountry; the men of the false armistice, of the unconditional surrenderand of the filched millions deposited in advance in foreign banks to helpthem evade the gehenna into which their misdeeds would throw theircountry. It also took us some time to understand that the King neithercould, nor probably wanted to, part with those who, usurping again theright to represent the interests of their country before the victoriouspowers, had entered the profitable service of the conspiracy .

In Paris I found Horia Sima with a great many of the Legionaries Ihad left in Austria. The majority of them were working in various

The End and After / 273

274 / The Suicide o f Europefactories and plants, especially at the Ripolin painting industry and atthe Renault works, many carrying on their studies at the same timeat the University of Paris .

My son was in Africa with the French Foreign Legion, and I went tosee him before his departure for Indo-China, where he fought the Com-munist enemy for four more years. His wife and her father, GeneralAvramescu, had been arrested in Rumania by the NKVD (the Russiansecret police) and taken to Russia . The only news we had later was oftheir death in a Soviet prison . It was by mere chance that the same fatedid not befall my wife .Horia Sima and the exiled Legionaries were animated by my own

instinctive and powerful obsessions : union between exiled Rumaniansin view of the fight for the liberation of our country . In order to offeran example to those who were involving Rumanian exiles in an exten-sion of the farce of former political life in Rumania, we announced thedissolution of the Legionary Movement as a political organization, in-volving its activities in exile ; but not as a fighting factor abroad or inRumania, where it represented the only organized resistance . Moreover,we invited all other groups of exiled Rumanians to join us in this fight .

In total contradiction to this attitude, the new leaders of the oldpolitical parties, who by some miracle of levitation had been transportedfrom the streets and coffeehouses of Bucharest to those of New York,Paris, and London, had shamelessly organized themselves on the accursedpattern of their former political life . They even included the MarxistSocialist Party, which had never played any part in Rumanian politicsexcept for the last obscure leaders who were functioning as auxiliaryforces to the "gravediggers ." This group, far from responding to ourwise and friendly overtures, chose to be the instrument of a campaignof discord and disintegration among exiles, and its members appliedthemselves to their task with an assiduity and a consistency that couldnot have been greater if their disruptive activities were a conditionsine qua non of their comfortable lot in New York and Washington .

I must however mention as a qualified exception the case of old Gen-eral Radescu, accepted reluctantly by the political swarm as Presidentof the so-called Rumanian National Committee .

It was with the purpose of establishing the solidarity of all groups ofRumanians on this side of the Iron Curtain that I had written fromCopenhagen to General Radescu who was at that time in Lisbon . I hadreceived a very encouraging answer that seemed to reflect my worriesand my desires, with a few flattering words for our Movement, but alsowith a suggestion that I felt obliged to decline . The Movement couldnot take the responsibility for any individual violence against the per-secutors of our people, since this would provoke only cruel retaliation

The End and After / 275

and still more suffering for those left behind . Only a mass upheavalcould offer us a possibility of victory . Such an upheaval could be or-ganized, and the permanence of an eventual victory could not be guar-anteed without the help of the Western Powers . Had the General thepromise of such help? Well, he had not .

Radescu arrived in Paris from New York and immediately let us knowthat he wanted to contact every group of Rumanian refugees of what-ever political extraction . We could not disregard such an invitation, andI was sent with Professor Protopopescu to call on the General at hishotel. We found a true patriot, convinced as we were of the necessityof establishing an unanimous agreement of purpose and of effort amongRumanian exiles as a first step toward the constitution of an organic,militant collaboration with the representatives of other enslaved na-tions for the liberation of our countries . The reception was warm andcordial; we talked for a long time, and it was with real emotion, on bothsides, and the satisfaction of work well done that we parted .

I met General Radescu again a few days later at a reception given bya well-intentioned Rumanian in honor of this establishment of contactbetween the Legionary Movement and the President of the RumanianNational Committee. About fifty persons were present, and a circle hadformed around the General and this writer as we engaged in an animateddiscussion. However, when an enthusiastic photographer came andpointed his camera at us, Radescu, with a nimbleness astonishing forhis age, bent almost double, as if it had been a bullet and not a Kodakthat he had to dodge, and reappeared suddenly at the farthest corner ofthe room .I understood) The President of the Rumanian National Committee

was not a free agent either . He had less liberty to choose the way hebelieved best to defend the interests of his country than the poorestworker at Ripolin or at Renault . Before leaving, the General took measide and told me : "You must forgive me, Sir. Imagine what those peoplein New York would have said if they had seen you and me photographedtogether 1"

Post Scriptum

Early in April, 1943, Sikorski came to luncheon atNo. 10. He told me that he had proofs that the So-viet Government had murdered the 15,000 Polishofficers and other prisoners in their hands, and thatthey had been buried in vast graves in the forests,mainly around Katyn. He had a wealth of evidence.I said, "If they are dead nothing you can do canbring them back ." [Roman added.]

Winston CHURCHILLThe Hinge of Fate"Ten millions," he [Stalin] said, holding up his

hands. "It was fearful. Four years it lasted ." . . ."These," [I said] "were what you called Kulaks?""Yes," he said, but he did not repeat the word. . . ."Oh well . . . the great bulk were very unpopu-

lar and were wiped out by their labourers." . . .I record as they come back to me these memories,

and the strong impression I sustained at the momentof millions of men and women being blotted out ordisplaced for ever . A generation would no doubtcome to whom their miseries will be unknown, butit would be sure of having more to eat and blessStalin's name . [Roman added.]

Winston CHURCHILLThe Hinge of Fate

Yet when Mr. Churchill came to power, one of thefirst decisions of his Government was to extendbombing to the non-combatant area .

Captain Liddel HARTThe Revolution in WarfareWe must not add needlessly to the weight of ourtask or the burden that our soldiers bear. SatelliteStates, suborned or overawed, may perhaps, if theycan help to shorten the war, be allowed to work theirpassage home . But the twin roots of all our evils,Nazi tyranny and Prussian militarism, must be ex-tirpated . Until this is achieved there are no sacrificesthat we will not make and no lengths in violence towhich we will not go.

Winston CHURCHILL"The War: Past and Future"A speech in the House of CommonsSeptember 21, 1943Let those who have hitherto not imbrued their

hands with innocent blood beware lest they join theranks of the guilty, for most assuredly the three AlliedPowers will pursue them to the uttermost ends of theearth and will deliver them to their accusers in orderthat justice may be done .

Winston CHURCHILLFrom the Allied Powers' "Declarationon German Atrocities" as quoted byCordell Hull in his Memoirs.

Post Scriptum

The preceding pages might have provoked a certain perplexityin those who have had the patience to follow me all the way through :Was not the author horrified by the atrocities, attributed to the NationalSocialist regime, which he hardly mentions?The author has indeed been horrified by the atrocities attributed to

certain groups of the National Socialist organization, atrocities thatwere brought to public cognizance, even in Germany, only after the endof the war. My indignation did not need the fanciful figure of six andone-half million victims in order for it to be aroused . My indignationparalleled that of the many who had been equally horrified at theatrocities of the Communist regime in Russia and elsewhere and atthose committed by governments, courts, and armies of the nations thatwere at war with Germany. My indignation was all the more intense asthe immensity of the Soviet carnage was certified by the perpetratorsthemselves : by Stalin, for instance, when he confessed to Churchill thathe had been obliged to liquidate ten million peasants, and by Molotovin his Odessa speech of 1933 when he boasted about the liquidation-up to that date-of more than twenty million "bourgeois." It was inAmerican and British books, newspapers, and testimonies that I foundfurther information regarding the atrocities that had been committedon the Western side of the barricade .

Has everybody the right to the same indignation and the same re-pulsion?

Roosevelt and Churchill knowingly handed over, at Teheran andYalta, to the same Stalin and Molotov, and to the Kremlin gang ofmurderers and tormentors, one hundred and twenty million Europeans .They did this at the very time when, to their knowledge and with theirtacit approbation, the Kremlin was inaugurating a new cycle of slaughtersand massive deportations corresponding more than anything else inmodern times to the definition of "genocide ." At Teheran, when Stalinasked Roosevelt's consent to seize those doomed peoples, Roosevelt gaveit without any hesitation, asking him only to keep this agreement secretuntil after the next presidential election in the United States .

When General Wladyslaw Sikorski, Prime Minister of the Polish Gov-279

280 / The Suicide of Europe

ernment-in-Exile, with indisputable proof in his hands, told Churchillthat fifteen thousand Polish officers, the flower of Poland's heroic youth,had been butchered in Katyn and in the Arctic, the British Prime Min-ister shrugged his shoulders and answered coldly : "If they are dead noth-ing you can do will bring them back ."' And on the same page of hismemoirs that he relates Stalin's confession of the liquidation of tenmillion peasants Churchill informs us that future generations will blessthe name of Stalin because they will have more to eat thanks to thecollective farm system? This not only indicates the imperturbable cyni-cism of the man who has been called by some "the conscience of theworld," but also his supreme ignorance of agricultural, economic, social,and psychological matters . Furthermore, with the same astonishing amor-ality, Churchill boasts of the way he proposed to share the countries ofEastern Europe with Stalin, the mass-murderer :

The moment was apt for business, so I said, "Let us settle about our af-fairs in the Balkans. Your armies are in Rumania and Bulgaria . We haveinterests, missions, and agents there . Don't let us get at cross-purposes insmall ways. So far as Britain and Russia are concerned, how would it dofor you to have ninety percent predominance in Rumania, for us to haveninety percent of the say in Greece, and go fifty-fifty about Yugoslavia?"While this was being translated I wrote out on a half-sheet of paper :

RumaniaRussia

90%The others

10%Greece

Great Britain

90%(in accord with U.S.A .)

Russia

10%Yugoslavia

50-50%Hungary

50-50%Bulgaria

Russia

75%The others

257I pushed this across to Stalin, who had by then heard the translation .

There was a slight pause . Then he took his blue pencil and made a largetick upon it, and passed it back to us . It was all settled in no more timethan it takes to set down . . . .

After this there was a long silence . The pencilled paper lay in the centreof the table. At length I said, "Might it not be thought rather cynical if itseemed we had disposed of these issues, so fateful to millions of people, insuch an offhand manner? Let us burn the paper ." "No, you keep it," saidStalin .3' Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War: The Hinge of Fate (Boston, Hough-

ton Mifflin Company, 1950), p . 759 .2 The Hinge of Fate, p . 499 .8 Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War: Triumph and Tragedy (Boston,

Houghton Mifflin Company, 1953), pp . 227-228 .

Post Scriptum / 281

President Truman, despite the fact that Japan had manifested thedesire two months earlier to lay down its weapons, wantonly orderedthat two atomic bombs be dropped on that country, killing or maimingmore than two hundred thousand innocent beings .4 For a long whilethe story of the bombardment of Dresden, contrary to that of otherGerman cities, was tabu for chroniclers, historians, and newspaper peo-ple. Credible accounts place the total number of dead at 250,000 . Thenumber of casualties might have been still greater-according to certainreports-in a city crowded with refugees (there were up to one millionpermanent and temporary inhabitants), without any air raid shelters,which received in a few hours the full impact of 3250 heavy bombers . Weread in the London Times of February 16, 1945, only three days after theDresden air raid :

Dresden which had been pounded on Tuesday night by 800 of the 1,400heavies sent out by the R .A.F. and was the main object of 1,350 Fortressesand Liberators on the following day, yesterday received its third heavy at-tack in thirty-six hours . It was the principal target for more than 1,100United States 8th Army Air Force bombers .5

We will let F. J. P. Veale further describe for us this brilliant aerialoperation in his book Advance to Barbarism which everybody ought tohave read and which few dare to open :

The modern city of Dresden has grown up round the medieval town, nowknown as the Altstadt, which lies at the southern end of the bridge crossingthe Elbe. In the eighteenth century Dresden became one of the great showcities of the world through the construction of a number of magnificentpublic buildings, all of which were erected in the Altstadt district of thecity. Within a radius of half a mile from the southern end of the AugustusBridge was built a unique group of palaces, art galleries, museums andchurches-the Schloss, containing the famous Griines Gewolbe with itspriceless art treasures ; the beautiful Briihl Terasse extending along the leftbank of the Elbe; the beautiful Catholic Cathedral, the domed FrauenKirche; the Opera House, the Johanneum Museum and, above all, the fa-mous Zwinger Museum containing one of the finest collections of picturesin the world, including among its many treasures Raphael's Sistine Ma-donna, purchased by the Elector Augustus II, in 1745, for 20,000 ducats .Within this small area, so well known to British and American travellerson the continent, there were, and could be, no munition factories or, in fact,'According to Edward Teller with Allen Brown, The Legacy of Hiroshima (Garden

City, N.Y ., 1962), p. 4, the "official statistics" for Hiroshima cite "78,150 people killed,13,983, missing, 37,425, injured ." For Nagasaki, according to Leslie R . Groves, Now ItCan Be Told (New York, Harper & Brothers, 1962), p . 346, "the United States Stra-tegic Bombing Survey later estimated the casualties at 35,000 killed and 60,000 in-jured."

s F . J . P . Veale, Advance to Barbarism (C . C . Nelson Publishing Company, Appleton,Wisc., 1953), p . 132 .

282 / The Suicide of Europe

industries of any kind . The resident population of this district was small .The main railway station of Dresden is situated a mile away to the Southand the railway bridge which carries the main line to Berlin is half a miledown the river .6

This, then, was the target, and here are the details of this raid whichmight well count as one of the most illustrious instances of what havebeen called war crimes, and even of what has been called genocide .

On the morning of the fateful February 13, 1945, fast enemy reconnais-sance planes were observed flying over the city. The inhabitants of Dresdenhad no experience with modern air warfare and the appearance of theseplanes aroused curiosity rather than apprehension . Having been for so longoutside any theatre of war, the city lacked anti-aircraft defenses, and theseplanes were able to observe in complete safety all that they desired . Nodoubt, they observed and reported that all the roads through and aroundDresden were filled with dense throngs moving westward . . . . It was com-mon knowledge that a frantic orgy of murder, rape and arson was takingplace in those districts of Silesia which had been overrun by the Soviethordes. It should not have been difficult to deduce in these circumstancesthat many people in districts threatened by the Russian advance would de-cide to try to escape westwards .

Some hours after night had fallen, about 9 :30 p.m ., the first wave of at-tacking planes passed over Dresden. The focus of the attack was the Alt-stadt . Terrific fires soon broke out which were still blazing when the secondwave of attackers arrived shortly after midnight . The resulting slaughter wasappalling, since the normal population of the city of some 600,000 had beenrecently swollen by a multitude of refugees, mostly women and children,their menfolk having remained behind to defend their homes . Every housein Dresden was filled with these unfortunates, every public building wascrowded with them, many were camping in the streets. Estimates of theirnumber vary from 300,000 to 500,000. There were no air raid shelters ofany kind, unless we so regard the enormous cloud of stifling black smokewhich, after the first attack, covered the city and into which the second andthird waves of attackers dropped their bombs . Adding a unique touch tothe general horror, the wild animals in the zoological garden, renderedfrantic by the noise and glare, broke loose : it is said that these animals andterrified groups of refugees were machine-gunned as they tried to escapeacross the Grosser Garden by low-flying planes and that many bodies riddledby bullets were found later in this part . . . .

The circumstances made it impossible for the authorities to undertake thetask of trying to identify the victims . So enormous were the number of bod-ies that nothing could be done but to pile them on timber collected fromthe ruins and there to burn them . In the Altmarkt one funeral pyre afteranother disposed of 500 bodies, or parts of bodies, at a time . This gruesomework went on for weeks .7

6 Veale, pp. 132-133 .7 Veale, pp . 133-135 .

Post Scriptum / 283

Here are the commentaries of Howard Cowan, Associated Press cor-respondent at the Supreme Headquarters in Paris, reporting in ThePeople, in the issue of February 18, 1945 :

Allied war chiefs have made the long-awaited decision to adopt deliberateterror bombing of German populated centers as a ruthless expedient tohasten Hitler's doom . . . .

The all-out air war on Germany became obvious with the unprecedentedassault on the refugee-crowded capital two weeks ago, and the subsequentattacks on other cities, jammed with civilians fleeing the Russian tide inthe East .

The decision may revive protests in some Allied quarters against "uncivi-lized warfare" but it is likely to be balanced by satisfaction in certain partsof the Continent and Britain .8

As Veale records it, a very unfortunately worded, semiofficial denialthat the Dresden raid had been purely a terror-raid appeared in mostnewspapers: "The Dresden raid was designed to cripple communica-tions . The fact that the city was crowded with refugees at the time of theattack was coincidental and took the form of a bonus (italics sup-plied) ." 9

We ask our readers : is any person, any group of persons, any publicopinion which considers the killing of hundreds of thousands of women,children and other non-combatants as a bonus to an already barbarousmilitary operation, entitled to express any indignation whatever at otheracts of cruelty? On which side of the barricade must be sought the re-sponsible factors for those unbelievable horrors? "It is one of the greatesttriumphs of modern emotional engineering that, in spite of the plainfacts of the case which could never be disguised or even materiallydistorted, the British public throughout the blitz period (1940-1941),remained convinced that the entire responsibility for the sufferingswhich it was undergoing rested on the German leaders," writes Veale . 10

The strict censorship of any mention of the facts was lifted in April1944 when the Luftwaffe was reduced almost to silence from lack ofgasoline. It was Mr. J. M. Spaight, former Principal Secretary of theAir Ministry who was asked to publish a book entitled Bombing Vindi-cated from which we extract the following passage :

Because we were doubtful about the psychological effect of propagandistdistortion of the truth that it was we who started the strategic bombing of-fensive, we have shrunk from giving our great decision of May 11th, 1940,

° Veale, pp . 135-136 . Italics added .° Veale, p . 136 .10 Veale, p. 120 .

284 / The Suicide o f Europe

the publicity which it deserved . That, surely, was a mistake . It was a splen-did decision."

It is not the lack of frankness by the advocate of terror bombing thatshould be criticized. Mr. Spaight dismisses with justified contempt, theapology put forward that those bombings were only acts of reprisal forthe German bombing of Warsaw and Rotterdam . "When Warsaw andRotterdam were bombed German armies were at their gates . The air-bombing was an operation of the tactical offensive ." 12 Captain LiddellHart concurs. He writes : "Bombing did not take place until the Germantroops were fighting their way into these cities, and thus conformed tothe old rules of siege bombardment ." 13 Spaight agrees that Hitler wasgenuinely anxious to reach an agreement with Britain "confining theaction of aircraft to the battle zones ." 14 He recognizes also that Hitlerundertook reluctantly the bombing of the British civilian populationthree months after the R .A.F. had commenced bombing the Germancivilian populations .

Air Marshal Sir Arthur Harris in his authoritative book, Bomber Of-fensive, agrees with Spaight and Captain Hart as to which governmentwas responsible for the first terror bombings . In what concerns Dresden,especially, he writes : "I will only say that the attack on Dresden was atthe time considered a military necessity by much more important peoplethan myself ." 15 When reproached for the inhumanity of indiscriminatebombing he always refers to a British Government White Paper . Thisdocument claims that the blockade of Europe by the British Navy be-tween 1914 and 1918 "caused nearly 800,000 deaths, mainly women andchildren ." 16 Indiscriminate bombing, argues the Air Marshal, did notkill as many people . . . so why make a fuss about it. Apart from thestrangeness of this line of justification of a crime by another crime, theAir Marshal's statement provokes two questions : 1) Is he not aware thatindiscriminate bombing killed many more than 800,000 people (the post-

1 J. M. Spaight, Bombing Vindicated (London, Bles, 1944), p . 74; quoted in Veale,p. 121 . If it is true that Mr. Leslie Hore-Belisha, British Secretary of State for War(1937-1940), initiated this "splendid decision," his coreligionists have no reason to con-gratulate him for it . Indeed, it was after the bombing of Hamburg and Bremen thatthe concentration camps in Germany started to be filled with the Jewish populationwhose homes and apartments were given to the hundreds of thousands of Germans leftwithout a roof after the destruction of their cities-a fact generally forgotten by chron-iclers and historians of those gruesome times . Italics added .

12 Spaight, p. 43; quoted in Veale, p. 123 .18 B . H. Liddell Hart, The Revolution in Warfare (London, Faber & Faber, 1946), p.

72; quoted in Veale, pp. 123-124 .14 Spaight, p . 60 ; quoted in Veale, p. 124 .11 Arthus Harris, Bomber Offensive (London, Collins, 1947), p. 242; quoted in Veale,

p. 130.16 See Veale, p. 126 .

Post Scriptum / 285

war estimates bring the figure to 2,000,000); 2) Why does not the AirMarshal produce also the number of people who died in Germany dur-ing World War II, because of the Allied blockade-women, children,non-combatants, and inmates of the concentration camps?

It is only fair to observe that the French High Command was opposedto the use of the bombers otherwise than as an extension of the artilleryfire on the battlefields . For motives only known to themselves-lack of :bombers perhaps-the Red Army did not as a rule use terror bombingsof enemy cities . The full responsibility of these atrocious crimes lies atthe door of the British and United States Governments ; in other words,on the shoulders of Prime Minister Churchill and Presidents Rooseveltand Truman.It was President Truman who handed over to the same Communist

murderers and lunatics to whom Roosevelt and Churchill had handedover eleven European nations, the whole of China, one-fourth of thepopulation of the earth . As President of the United States, he shareswith Clement Atlee and with the commanders of the American andBritish armies, the responsibilities of handing over to the Soviet execu-tioners the four hundred thousand men and officers of the Vlasov Army,in contradiction to the Geneva Convention, to the traditional laws ofwar, and to elementary humanitarian considerations . Also under theirorders and control, tens of thousands of Russian and East Europeanrefugees, including men who had fought as volunteers with the UnitedStates and British armies, were delivered to the Soviets and did notfare much better than the Vlasov soldiers .

Attlee refused to interfere to save the life of a young German boy ofthirteen, sentenced to death by the military court of one of the "libera-tor" nations, for having kept a picture of Hitler in his room. This sameMr. Attlee paid a goodwill visit to Red China at the height of the bar-barous terrors to which the humble and toiling Chinese people weresubmitted, and came back only with words of praise for the administra-tion of Mao Tse-tung. He did not report any mass liquidation otherthan that of the Chinese flies, against which the Red Chinese sanitaryauthorities had declared, he assured us, a war to the finish .

President Eisenhower's Administration was an indifferent witness tothe barbarous repression of the Hungarian insurrection by Khrushchev'sMongolian divisions ; a repression that started only after Eisenhowerassured Khrushchev, through his friend Tito, that the United Stateswould never tolerate the establishment in Hungary, or in any othersatellite country, of a government unfriendly to Soviet Russia . It wasat the same time that the President mobilized the Eighth Fleet in theMediterranean, not against a menacing Soviet Russia, but against heradversaries France and Great Britain . It was under this same Administra-

286 / The Suicide of Europe

tion that half of the Korean and Indo-Chinese populations were fed,without consideration of their wishes, to the Communist Moloch .

It is not only the persons mentioned, their accomplices and partners-by-consent, who are directly responsible for the butchery and enslave-ment of whole populations, but also their political staffs and all thosewho by commission, omission or misinformation have helped, hiddenor attenuated those atrocities . These people have lost the right to ex-press, without hypocrisy, any indignation over what occurred in Germanconcentration camps during the last two years of the war when, by theway, a great many of the lamented casualties occurred because of thesystem of starvation of the German civilian population provoked byillegal blockades-a system inaugurated by the British Government dur-ing World War I, in flagrant contradiction to the Geneva Conventionand contrary to centuries of international practice .

We must not forget those either directly or indirectly responsible forthe saturnalia of massacred civilians and for the uprooting of entirepopulations that followed the Allied victory . Most especially we mustnot forget the hundreds of judges, military or civilian who system-atically sent to the gallows or to endless imprisonment enemy generalsfor the sole reason that they had been enemies . Let us remember thatamong those judges only two, to the best of our knowledge, kept theirsense of honor and justice, condemning by their dissenting opinions,the crimes perpetrated by their colleagues : Justice Rahabinode Pal,the representative of India in the Tokyo trial, and Associate JusticeFrank Murphy of the United States Supreme Court 1 7 Lastly, we mustremember the exhaustive massacre of Mussolini's soldiers and BlackShirts-last defenders of Italian territory-that accompanied the ad-vance of the Allied armies along the peninsula .

Also deprived of the right to express indignation over German atroc-

17 On page 176 Veale states : "In the war trials of Tokyo, in 1947-1948, the Indianrepresentative, Mr. Justice Rahabinode Pal, delivered a brilliant dissenting judgmentin which he laid down that 'the farce of a trial of vanquished leaders by the victorswas in itself an offense against humanity,' and was, therefore, in itself a war-crime ."On pages 224 and 225 Veale quotes Mr . Justice Frank Murphy of the United StatesSupreme Court, who "in his brilliant dissenting judgment declared that the chargeagainst General Tomoyuki Yamashita amounted to this : 'We, the victorious Americanforces, have done everything possible to destroy and disorganize your lines of com-munication, your effective control of your personnel . . . . And now we charge andcondemn you for having been inefficient in maintaining control of your troops . . . .We will judge the discharge of your duties by the disorganization that we have our-selves created . Our standards of judgment are whatever we wish to make them . . . .Yamashita was rushd to trial under an improper charge, given insufficient time toprepare an adequate defense, deprived of the benefits of some of the most elementaryrules of evidence, and was summarily sentenced to be hanged.' " Veale then says that"on February 23, 1946, General Yamashita was hanged . Needless to say, he met hisfate with stoical courage and dignity ."

Post Scriptum / 287

ities, in our opinion, are those who have accepted the participation ofthe Soviets and their stooges, the most constant and cruel violators ofthe rights of men and nations, as members of the United Nations, on theCommittee of the Rights of Man, and in the International Court inThe Hague ; those also who with billions of dollars, with the mostmodern weapons, with the most modern industrial equipment, and withmillions of tons of food have helped the Communist Governments tomaintain their odious despotism and to prepare for further conquests ;those who have received with open arms at Camp David, or elsewhere,Khrushchev and other Kremlin assassins even after the massacre inBudapest .

It was not the purpose of this book to recapitulate all the proofs ofthe complicity between the Kremlin and the Western capitals, or of allthe misdeeds on a large or small scale for which the Soviet and Easternleaders were directly or indirectly responsible during and after the lastWorld War. That is why we have thought also that this is not the placeto summarize the outrages of the National Socialist regime, which atleast risked its existence in an attempt to wipe from this world of oursthe Communist infamy, an attempt in which Rumania, we rememberwith pride, also valiantly participated .

I have examined in this book-and more elaborately in La Bete sansNom now out of print-the responsibility for a war in which tens ofmillions perished ; for a war which led to unbelievable brutalities andgruesome oppression ; for a war that started under the pretext of savingDanzig for Poland and ended by handing over the whole of Poland tothe mass murderers of Katyn . It was my conclusion, and it still is myconviction, that the responsibility for World War II, and therefore forall its horrors, lies chiefly with a certain international camorra that usedthe influence and control it had over Roosevelt and Churchill to applyirresistible pressure upon the Polish, the French and the British Govern-ments, forcing them into a decision that was absolutely contrary totheir genuine national interests and fatal to the destiny of ChristianCivilization .

Appendix

Diplomatic Papers of the United Statesand Rumania's Capitulation

The Diplomatic Papers for 1944 issued in 1966 by the Histor-ical Office of the United States Department of State include some inter-esting elucidations regarding Rumania's capitulation and the unprec-edented betrayal of the Rumanian people and of the Rumanian Armyat the hands of Rumania's politicians .

If we do not hesitate to call this betrayal unprecedented, it is becausethe Italian capitulation and coat-turning occurred in quite differentcircumstances. Indeed, the powers to which Italy surrendered were theUnited States and Great Britain and not the implacable, annihilatingenemy that is Soviet Russia . The Italian people and the Italian Armywere tired of a war that had never represented for them more than thepersonal ambitions of their leaders and their fanciful territorial preten-sions. Rumania's war was an unavoidable one, for life or death, againsta rapacious and never satiated enemy ; her people, her army were fight-ing tirelessly and were prepared to fight to the last man and the lastcartridge. A powerful opposition was bubbling in Italy under the Fas-cist superstructure . The whole of the Rumanian people formed a solidblock behind the fighting troops, the State was functioning with eagerand meticulous activity, the only opposition was the hidden one of thepolitician's conspiracy .

All the quotations in this chapter are from the official publicationForeign Relations of the United States, Diplomatic Papers, 1944, Vol-ume IV, Europe .Ambassador Lincoln MacVeagh in charge of United States-Rumanian

affairs in Cairo wired the following to Secretary of State Cordell Hullon March 3, 1944 :

289

290 / The Suicide of EuropeI am informed that the Rumanian emissary has arrived in Ankara . He

is Prince [Barbu] §tirbei and is now staying with his nephew the RumanianAmbassador until such time as he may be brought to Cairo secretly . . . .According to a British secret document . . . §tirbei is a relative of

Cretzianu who has been representing Maniu in conversations with Britishagents and is father-in-law to a British officer Major Boxhall . He is not anemissary of the Government but Marshal Antonescu is said to be privy tohis mission . . . .

Incidentally it would appear from the document referred to that thegroup behind ~tirbei does not yet realize the full seriousness of Rumania'sposition . When Cretzianu was informed that the sending of an emissarywould be useless unless he were prepared to accept unconditional surrenderor at least to discuss the details of accession to power of a government soprepared, he replied (1) that the Rumanians believe that Bulgaria maysoon break with Germany and thus give the British the possibility of en-tering Bulgaria ; (2) that under such conditions Rumania could surrenderunconditionally to the British ; and (3) that Rumania would rather perishfighting than that "history should show that her present rulers surrenderedunconditionally to Russia." Yet it had been previously pointed out to himthat there is no hope of British troops arriving in the vicinity of Rumaniaand that it would be better for the latter if the Russians should arrive ather borders and find her with arms turned against the Germans than thatthey should find her still fighting on Germany's side . [Diplomatic Papers,1944, Vol. IV, p . 148. Italics added.]

Cretzianu's indignant declarations represented exactly the frame ofmind of our Exile Government in Vienna and we have no reason tobelieve that at that moment Prince Stirbei did not entertain the samecategorical feelings . Soon, however, both would be obliged to recognizethe trap into which they had fallen, to admit the Allied non possumus,and finally to yield the control of the Cairo discussion to another groupof Maniu's emissaries who would hasten to comply and give over every-thing in return for a change of the political regime in Rumania ofwhich they had hoped to be the beneficiaries .

The whole drama of betrayed Rumania unfolds between Cretzianu'sviolent outburst and Maniu's desperate confession to John Helier LeRougetel and to Burton Y . Berry (the British and the United Statesrepresentatives in Bucharest after the war), to the effect that "if he[Maniu] had known the Soviets were to be given a free hand [in Ru-mania] he would not have advised the King to sign the armistice ." Whenwe follow day by day the negotiations initiated in Ankara and Cairo byManiu's emissaries, it is impossible to understand how he could haveignored the terms of surrender until it was too late to see that the West-ern Powers had entirely abandoned Rumania to the hands of theSoviets. One cannot help remembering the impression of many of thosewho had to deal with him, that behind an impenetrable mask Maniuwas hiding a bottomless opacity, a total and carefully cultivated igno-

The United States and Rumania's Capitulation / 291

rance of history and of present political facts and contingencies. Hediscovered the tragic truth shortly before starting to expiate his errorsin the Communist prison where, like Dinu Bratianu, he met his death .Maniu, Bratianu, and Stirbei had at least the courage and the patriotismnot to abandon their people in the hour of great misfortune and toshare their calvary with them to the last day of their lives .

On January 8, 1944, Secretary of State Hull informed John Winant,U.S. Ambassador in the United Kingdom :

Department was informed by British Embassy on November 21 that amessage had been received from Maniu indicating his desire to send a spe-cial delegate or delegates out of Rumania for the purpose of discussing ar-rangements for a political changeover in that country . The British Govern-ment proposed to reply to Maniu's message by saying that his emissarywould be received on the understanding that his sole function would beto discuss "operational details" looking to the overthrow of the present re-gime in Rumania and its replacement by a Government prepared to offerunconditional surrender to the three principal allies. It was stated that theSoviet Government had approved the proposed reply . . . . [This] Depart-ment gave its agreement to the proposed British reply already approved bythe Soviet Government. [D .P ., 1944, IV, pp. 133-134. Italics added .]

It was this reply, in which the three adversaries of Rumania con-curred, which was communicated to Maniu before he decided-in secretagreement with Antonescu, obviously-to send Stirbei to Ankara andCairo. Here are some extracts of MacVeagh's report to the Secretary ofState about the first conversations with Stirbei in Cairo, dated March17, 1944 :

Stirbei stated that he represents Maniu and not Marshal Antonescu,though he "knows" what the latter thinks and that the Marshal has beenin touch with the Allies both in Madrid and Stockholm . He said that theGovernment and the King as well as the opposition are desirous of makinga change of front [Antonescu was "the Government," and Maniu and theother members of the conspiracy, belonging to the parties of Maniu andBratianu, were the opposition] and that the Government is in a better po-sition to do this than the opposition because it disposes of greater effectivesand enjoying the confidence of the Germans could manage more adequatesecret preparations . . . . On the other hand, should the Allies desire imme-diate action, the Maniu interests are willing to stage a coup d'etat. . . .

Further as regards the coup d'etat he said that plans are prepared andthat these include the participation by the King . . . . Immediate help fromthe Allies would be expected, consisting of air support and debarkation atConstanza. When asked who would undertake this last operation he saidthat obviously only the Russians are in a position to do so .

In conclusion he was informed that what he had said would be reportedto our respective Governments . [D .P ., 1944, IV, p. 150. Italics added .]

292 / The Suicide of EuropeOn March 25 Stirbei, who had received a message from Maniu, tried

to communicate it to the American and the British delegates . MacVeaghinformed the Secretary of State that :

Lord Moyne [British Minister Resident in the Middle East] has informedSStirbei that his message cannot be accepted because it is addressed only tothe British and Americans and not to all three negotiating powers ; andthat negotiations will be resumed upon receipt of a message addressedjointly to the British, Russian and American representatives . [D.P., 1944,IV, p. 157 .]

From the Joint Chiefs of Staff to the Secretary of State. Signed byAdmiral U.S. Navy, William D . Leahy, dated from Washington, 28March 1944 :

My Dear Mr. Secretary : The Joint Chiefs of Staff have considered yourtwo undated memoranda forwarding a summary of a series of telegramsfrom Moscow to London [and] to Cairo, setting forth the views of theSoviet Government as to steps now to be taken if the surrender of theRumanian army can be effected . The Joint Chiefs of Staff note that theRussian proposal in effect leaves the matter of Rumanian surrender ex-clusively in Russian hands but consider that, from a military viewpoint,this is only natural and to be expected since Russian forces are the onlyones prepared to implement and to take advantage of the surrender terms .[D.P ., 1944, IV, p . 161 .]

The "Provisions for Imposition Upon Rumania at Time of Surren-der," agreed upon in January 1944 between the American, the British,and the Soviet Governments, were never communicated officially untilJune 1944 to the Rumanian negotiators to whom the only informationthat was generally given was that Rumania had to surrender uncondi-tionally. These provisions were enumerated in extenso by Mr. JamesClement Dunn, the Director of the Office of European Affairs, in acommunication to Ambassador Winant . Although space does not permitus to reproduce this lengthy document (D.P., 1944, I V, pp. 136-142),there is no difficulty however in recording it as the most humiliating,the most arbitrary, the most rigorous act of surrender enforced on adefeated country. Articles 2 and 3 read :

2. Unconditional Surrender. The Rumanian Government and the Ru-manian High Command should be required to acknowledge the total defeatand unconditional surrender of Rumania's armed forces and to agree tosubmit to such terms and faithfully to execute such duties as may be im-posed upon them by the occupation authorities .

3 . Additional Provisions to be Imposed upon Rumania. The occupationauthorities should be authorized to impose in addition to the terms stipu-

The United States and Rumania's Capitulation / 293

lated at the time of surrender, such further terms as they may from timeto time deem necessary or appropriate .

The twenty-seven Articles, which provided for the projected act ofsurrender, gave the occupation authorities a right of interference andfinal decision in every branch of Rumania's national activity, not forget-ting the judiciary or Article 23 which covered the conduct ofeducational and other cultural agencies . Article 18, "Undesirable Ru-manian Organizations," which allowed that "such parts of these organ-izations as it may seem desirable may be retained or converted for thepurpose of performing necessary economic or social functions" may ormay not be interpreted as an invitation to organize slave labor . It is

a fact, in any case, that several hundred thousand Rumanian citizensfrom Bessarabia, Bucovina, and Transylvania were forcible transportedto Soviet Russia, with the consent of Washington and London, to theinfamous labor camps of Stalin as a prelude to war reparations .

What were Rumanian soldiers doing while Marshal Antonescu, victimof a total breakdown, was permitting petty politicians, eager to return totheir dolce vita of yore, to negotiate in secret the capitulation of Ru-mania's armies? Let Soviet Foreign Minister V . M. Molotov answer thequestion in this telegram from W . Averell Harriman, the AmericanAmbassador in the Soviet Union, to Secretary of State Hull, dated April18, 1944 .

For the President and the Secretary . In my talk with Molotov last eveninghe told me that the Rumanian troops were still fighting the Red Army andthose who surrendered had done so only after battle . In the Crimea thatresistance was particularly stubborn as the Rumanian divisions there con-sisted of better trained troops. He stated further that the Rumanian Gov-ernment had not changed in any way its policy of cooperation with Ger-many . [D.P., 1944, IV, p . 175 .]

It was about this time that the Soviets suddenly proposed to Maniu"semissaries, and asked them to transmit to Antonescu, armistice termsastonishingly more advantageous to Rumania than those elaborated bythe United States and Great Britain, in fact drastically different fromthose proposed by the Western Powers . Here are those terms as theywere transmitted by MacVeagh from Cairo, April 8, 1944, to the Secre-tary of State :

1. The Rumanian troops who are fighting with the Germans against theRed Army comprise seven divisions in Crimea, three or more divisions inthe region of Odessa, three or more divisions in the region of Kichinev .These Rumanian divisions must surrender to the Red Army, or they mustattack in the rear of the Germans and commence operations against theGermans together with the Red Army .

294 / The Suicide of Europe

If this is done the Soviet Government agrees to complete the armamentof all these divisions and to place them immediately at the disposition ofMarshal Antonescu and Mr. Maniu .

2. The Soviet minimum conditions of armistice are the following :(a) Rupture with the Germans and common operations of the Ru-

manian and the Allied troops including the Red Army against the Ger-mans for the purpose of restoring the independence and sovereignty ofRumania .

(b) Reestablishment of the Rumanian-Soviet frontier in concordancewith the agreement of 1940 .

(c) Indemnity for the losses caused the Soviet Union by the hostilitiesand occupation by the Rumanians of its territory .

(d) Repatriation of the Soviet and Allied prisoners of war as well asthe internees .These minimum conditions can be changed for the worse if Rumania

does not accept them soon .3. The Soviet Government does not ask that Rumanian territory be

occupied for the duration of the armistice by the Soviet troops, but theSoviet troops as well as those of the Allies must have unrestricted freedomof movement through Rumanian territory if the military situation makesit necessary . The Rumanian Government must contribute to this to thebest of its ability. . . .

4. The Soviet Government considers unjust the decisions of the ViennaAward and it is ready to conduct operations in common with Rumaniaagainst the Hungarians and the Germans with the object of restoring toRumania all of Transylvania, or the major part thereof .

5. If Rumania wishes to have for contact with the Soviet Union besidesthe general representative for military questions, also a political repre-sentative for political questions, the Soviet Government has no objections .[D.P., 1944, IV, p. 170. Italics added .]

There is every reason to doubt the sincerity of the Kremlin's propos-als. Nevertheless they offered the Antonescu Government two basicmost important advantages : no change of regime, the command of theRumanian Army in the Marshal's hands, two levers of action which hecould have used ulteriorly, according to circumstances .Both the United States and the British Governments immediately

raised their objections, the chief of which were according to a memo-randum of Mr. Cloyce Kenneth Huston, of the Division of SouthernEuropean Affairs, dated April 11, 1944 :

1 . Since the terms constitute a definite departure from the principle ofunconditional surrender it would be important for the purposes of prestigeand psychological warfare to protect ourselves as far as possible fromcharges of having deserted this loudly announced principle . . . .

3 . The Russian proposals differ drastically from those prepared in theDepartment . . . . For example: The American draft was based on theprinciple of unconditional surrender, envisaged military occupation andcarried detailed provisions regarding occupational organs, demobilization,

The United States and Rumania's Capitulation / 295

disarmament, communications facilities, war criminals, repeal of discrimina-tory legislation et cetera . . . .

5 . Whereas we recognize the desirability of utilizing the Rumanian forcesin the prosecution of the war against the Germans as well as against theHungarians as long as they are fighting with and for the Germans, we feelit desirable to keep in mind the disadvantages of allowing Rumanian troopsto operate or to serve as occupying forces in Hungary and disputed Transyl-vanian territory .

The foregoing considerations are not intended to combat our presentdisposition to endorse the Russian terms, but it may be well to keep themin mind .Addendum : 6. The Russian proposals place no term on the authority of

the Antonescu regime, thus leaving open the question of whether we are todeal and collaborate with a government hitherto responsible for conduct-ing war against the Allies alongside the Germans. [D.P., 1944, IV, pp . 172-173. Italics added.]

The watchdogs in the State Department and the Foreign Office didnot have to worry . The Soviet terms offered on April 8, 1944, which anyturncoat ought to have accepted without further ado, were never seri-ously considered by Mr. Maniu and his new advisers ; they had, for them,a prohibitive flaw. They did not ask for a change of regime, they did notput Rumania back in the hands of the politicians . We insist, there was,no doubt, some ulterior motive in Soviet Russia's relative leniency butthe Kremlin terms represented the best possible price, at that moment,for the betrayal of the German ally . As an alternative Maniu suggestedfirst to transfer himself to Russian occupied territory and to form therean exile Government. His proposal was neither made nor taken seri-ously :

Ambassador Harriman to the Secretary of State . Moscow, April 25 .

In reply to my inquiry as to any developments in the Soviet-Rumaniansituation Molotov informed me that Maniu's proposal made by Princeytirbei, to break away from Antonescu and to form a new Government inSoviet occupied Rumania, although acceptable to the Soviet Government,was not considered as having been made seriously. He said that there wereyet no different [definite?] indications that Maniu would follow such acourse . [D .P ., 1944, IV, p. 177 .]

It was on May 25 that a certain Constantin Visoianu entered upon thescene. A derelict of Titulescu's clique he had been, along with hisconfederate Niculescu-Buzasti, during those last weeks of negotiationsand during the drama of capitulation and the false armistice, the truerepresentative of the insane ambitions of the old political parties . Oncein Cairo he took virtual control of the negotiations from the hands ofStirbei, who had always been of the opinion that an understanding withAntonescu concerning an attack against the German Army offered more

296 / The Suicide of Europe

prospects than a coup d'etat against him . The Soviet offers, which itseems at no time had been formally communicated to Antonescu eitherby Ankara or by the British secret DC station in Rumania, had momen-tarily to be bypassed. Therefore Visoianu, who a few weeks later wouldbe the warmest protagonist of the unconditional capitulation whichtreacherously disarmed our troops, came with irrelevant but irritantpretensions, including for instance the assurance "that Rumania's fundssequestered in Great Britain and the United States would be released ."The result was communicated by MacVeagh to the Secretary of State onJune 1, 1944 :

Lord Moyne, [N . V.] Novikov and I held conference this evening andagreed to hand the Rumanian emissaries a final statement in the followingsense, provided our Governments approved :

"In view of the situation created by the latest telegrams of Mr. Maniuthe delegates of the three powers deem it necessary to declare to the Ru-manian delegates that further negotiations would serve no purpose and thenegotiations are considered ended .

"If Mr. Maniu wishes to take advantage of the armistice terms offered bythe three powers he should follow the advice already given him by sendingan officer to make direct contact with the Red Army on the front ." [D.P.,1944, IV, pp. 180-181 .]

Marshal Antonescu had also established secret contacts with theenemies in Bern, in Madrid, in Stockholm . He was not adverse to theidea of turning his armies against his ally Germany, but was puttingforward more matter of fact and less pointless exigencies than Maniu, asfor instance that military operations against German troops by his ar-mies would not imply the invasion of Rumania's territory by Russianforces. The fight between the two groups of would-be-turncoats hadreached the form of a real auction sale with Antonescu keeping hisprice up and Maniu, or rather, the group of young adventurers lie hadchosen as advisers and executives, hastening to win the race by what-ever means and whatever concessions . It is with the story of this sorrycontest as told by the Diplomatic Papers that we will end this chapter :

MacVeagh to the Secretary of State . Cairo, June 13, 1944 .

Yesterday the Rumanian emissaries received from Maniu through Cretzi-anu a message in the following sense :

"Maniu agrees to conclude an armistice upon conditions presented bythe Allies . The means of putting the armistice into effect are in process ofbeing established in agreement with those responsible and will be com-municated to you in a few days .

"The patriotic democratic bloc has been formed ."In view of the fact that the conditions of the armistice have been ac-

cepted, we are convinced that we shall obtain an amelioration of these

The United States and Rumania's Capitulation / 297

conditions when they are applied as repeatedly declared by the Allies ."The Allied representatives are at a loss to understand the last sentence

above, since they have promised no amelioration of the armistice terms . . . .Today the British received a radio message from Rumania asking for

safe landing at Aleppo of a plane bearing three more Rumanians whowish to contact Prince §tirbei . . . . [D.P., 1944, IV, p . 181 .]

The Secretary of State [Hull] to MacVeagh . Washington, June 17,1944 .

The Department knows of no basis in fact for statement in Maniu'smessage that Allies had repeatedly declared that Rumania could obtainamelioration of armistice conditions . Since Maniu accepts Allied terms aspresented, however, his observation regarding their possible modificationin Rumania's favor when applied would seem to be irrelevant . [D.P ., 1944,IV, p . 182 . Italics added.]

We remind the reader that no convention of armistice was ever signedin Cairo; that Maniu's agreement to conclude an armistice was in fact ablind agreement upon whatever conditions the Allied Powers wouldask him to accept . When a Convention of Armistice was finally signedin Moscow on September 13, it was an aggravation not only of theSoviets' April proposals but even of the United States-United Kingdomdraft of January 1944. The Rumanian delegates had to sign on the dot-ted line, and of all the Rumanian suggestions for redrafting only twowere accepted by the Allied Powers. The first related to the amendmentof the article requiring Rumania to intern all German and Hungariancitizens. The Rumanian delegates asked that an exception be made infavor of the Jews . The second was to the effect that the Control Com-mission would end its activities with the conclusion of peace ; additionalwords with little significance, as the control of Rumania's affairs wassoon to be firmly in the hands of a Vyshinsky-imposed government .

But the chief worry of the new emissaries of Maniu was how to pushAntonescu out of the race for any sort of capitulation and out of thepolitical field :

MacVeagh to the Secretary of State . Cairo, June 29, 1944 .

. . . Maniu has sent §tirbei and Visoianu a telegram outlining his planto "get Rumania out of the war" . . . . For the Department's information,the plan provides the conclusion of the armistice and the change of Gov-ernment shall take place simultaneously with a "massive Soviet offensive ."It also calls for Allied air bombardment and Allied provision of threeairborne brigades and 2000 parachute troops inside Rumania . Whetherthese Allied contingents are to be Anglo-American or Russian is left to thedecision of the Supreme Allied Command . . . .

In a concluding paragraph Maniu states that having accepted the armi-

298 / The Suicide of Europe

stice terms and submitted "the precise plan of action," he would like toknow what "immediate improvements" the Allies are prepared to acceptin the armistice conditions . He says that "definite information exists thatso far as Antonescu is concerned modifications are agreed to" and that thegroups favorable to the Allies cannot undertake the grave responsibilityof action on any terms less favorable than those accorded to him . [D.P.,1944, IV, pp. 182-183 . Italics added .]

The United States Political Adviser [Murphy] Allied Force Head-quarters to the Secretary of State . Algiers, July 2, 1944 .

At the risk of possible repetition I report the following concerning nego-tiations now going on with Maniu : The main points of message receivedby AFHQ from Cairo are :

(A) As soon as the Allies confirm that they are ready to carry out theirside of the plan, details of coordination of operations will be arranged .This can be done in a very short time . . . .

(C) In view of the fact that the armistice conditions have been acceptedby the opposition, a plan of action submitted, and that the armistice willonly take effect following precise action by them, the Allies are asked whatimmediate improved armistice conditions they are prepared to accept . Inthis connection, it is asserted that better conditions were offered to Anto-nescu than to the opposition .

(D) The Allies are warned against the illusion that any understandingis possible with Antonescu . [D.P., 1944, IV, pp. 183-184. Italics added .]

The precise action, the plan to which Maniu's messages were alludingwere those which, with the complicity of four generals and the participa-tion of the King, were to lead to the capture of Rumania's fightingforces, surprised and deluded by the announcement of a non-existentarmistice agreement, and by a cease-fire order that did not bind theenemy.

Marshal Antonescu had also made contacts with the Allied powers,he was also prepared "to defend himself," to use his euphemism, againstthe German armies, but he would never have asked "for a massiveSoviet offensive" against his own troops, for Soviet airborne brigadesand parachutists to disorganize his command and his communications .He was blocking thereby the way of the political parties prepared tosacrifice everything for an ephemeral and tragicomic return to power .That is why he had to be eliminated, that is why he was trapped byhis own King, upon the suggestion of Maniu and the politicians, anddelivered to the Communist executioners .

On August 23 Cairo received a message from Maniu dated August 20,stating that he "has decided to take action" and asking if he can counton Allied bombing. A message from the King received by Stirbei thesame day states proclamation of break with Axis and requests massive

The United States and Rumania's Capitulation / 299

bombardment of numerous special places . On August 25, Grigore Nicu-lesco-Buzesti, the new Minister of Rumanian Foreign Affairs, informedBritish, American, and Soviet Governments that the King had dismissedthe Government of Marshal Antonescu and named General ConstantinSanAtescu Premier of a Government of National Union comprising theNational Peasant, the Liberal, the Communist, and the Socialist Parties .The end was not very far away. Maniu understood it only in De-

cember of that tragic year when, crying on the shoulders of Le Rougeteland Berry, he said that if he could have known what was to happen hewould not have advised the King to sign the armistice and would havebeen able to resist for a long time along the Focsani-Namaloasa-Galat:iLine. Maniu was once more wide of the mark . He had forgotten thatat the time of the signing of the Armistice Agreement, thanks to theunprecedented betrayal of the false armistice, the Rumanian troopsfighting on the Eastern Front had already been captured by the enemyand sent to Russian and Siberian concentration camps .

A Selected Bibliography

Anders, General Vladislav, Memoirs . Paris, Editions la Jeune Parque, 1948 .Auswartige Amt (German Foreign Office), Deutsche Weissbucher . Berlin, 1939 .Basdevant, Denise, Terres Roumaines contre Vents et Marees. Paris, Editiones de

1'Epargne, 1961 .Bast, Jorgen, Tva Krig, men inte ett Skott; Osterrike och Tjeckoslovakien 1938 .

Malmo, Dagens Backer, 1940 .Bonnet, Georges, Defense de la Paix de Washington ou Quai d'Orsay . Geneva,

Les Editions du Cheval aile, C. Bourquin, 1946 ., Fin d'une Europe . Geneva, Les Editions du Cheval aile, C. Bourquin,

1953 .Borrego, Salvador, Derrota Mundial. Mexico City, 1965 .Botkin, Tatiana, Vie, Martyre et Sacrifice de Tzars .British Foreign Office, Documents Concerning German-Polish Relations and the

Outbreak of Hostilities Between Great Britain and Germany on September3,1939 .

Caravilla, Mauricio, Pearl Harbor, Traicion de Roosevelt .Charpeleu, La Bete sans Nom . Copenhagen, Les Editions Diplomatiques, 1943 .Chennault, General Claire L ., Way of a Fighter; the Memoirs of Claire Lee

Chennault, Robert Hotz, ed . New York, G . P. Putnam's Sons, 1949 .Churchill, Winston, The World Crisis-1918-1928: The Aftermath, first ed .

London, Thornton Butterworth, Ltd ., 1929 ., The Second World War, 6 vols . Boston, Houghton Mifflin Company,

1948-1953.Ciano, Galeazzo, The Ciano Diaries, Hugh Gibson, ed. Garden City, New York,

Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1946.Ciuntu, Chirila, Din Bucovina pe Oder . Rio de Janeiro and Madrid, Editura

Dacia, 1967.Clauss, Max Walter, Der Weg nach Jalta: President Roosevelts Verantwortung .

Heidelberg, Vowinckel, 1952 .Crocker, George N., Roosevelt's Road to Russia . Chicago, Henry Regnery Com-

pany, 1959 .Codreanu, Corneliu, Pentru Legionari. Bucharest, 1936 .Conte, Arthur, Yalta ou le Partage du Monde . Paris, Laffont, 1964 .Donitz, Admiral Karl, Memoirs: Ten Years and Twenty Days . New York, Hil-

lary House Publishers, Ltd ., 1958 .Dugan, James, and Stewart, Carroll, Ploesti : Great Ground-Air Battle, 1 August,

1943 . New York, Random House, Inc., 1964. Also published as Tidal Wave .Diewerge, Wolfgang, Anschlag gegen den Frieden : Ein gelbbuch fiber Grunspan

and seine Helfershelfer . Munich, F. Eher nachf., 1939 .Easterman, Alexander L ., King Carol, Hitler and Lupescu. London, V. Gollancz,

Ltd., 1942 .301

302 / A Selected BibliographyEssen, Rutger, Den Ryska Elvationen . Stockholm, Fahlciantz and Gumaelius,

1941 .Fekete, Attila, Hungary's Assassination .Fleming, Peter, The Fate of Admiral Kolchak . New York, Harcourt, Brace &

World, Inc., 1963 .Flynn, John T., The Roosevelt Myth . New York, Devin-Adair Company, 1948 ., While You Slept . New York, Devin-Adair Company, 1951 .Forrestal, James V ., Forrestal Diaries, Walter Millis, ed ., with the collaboration

of E. S . Duffield. New York, Viking Press, Inc ., 1951 .French Foreign Office, French Yellow Book, 1939.Gafencu, Grigore, Preliminaries de la Guerre de l'Est . Geneva, 1945 ., Les derniers Jours de l'Europe . Zurich, 1946 .Glaser, Kurt, Czech o-Slovakia, A Critical History . Caldwell, Idaho, The Caxton

Printers, Ltd ., 1961 .Groves, Leslie R., Now It Can Be Told . New York, Harper & Brothers, 1962 .Henderson, Nevile, Final Report . British Foreign Office, 1939 ., Failure of a Mission . New York, G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1940.Hillgruber, Andreas, Hitler, Konig Carol and Marschall Antonescu . Weisbaden,

Steiner Verlag, 1954 .Hitler, Adolf, Mein Kampf . Munich, 1926 .Hull, Cordell, The Memoirs of Cordell Hull . 2 vols. New York, The Macmillan

Company, 1948 .Irving, David, The Destruction of Dresden . London, William Kimber, 1963 .Jaksch, Wenzel, Potsdam 1945 : Histoire d'un Mensonge . Paris, Editions de la

Table Ronde, 1967 .Jordan, George Racey, From Major Jordan's Diaries . Belmont, Massachusetts,

Western Islands, 1965 .Lane, Arthur Bliss, I Saw Poland Betrayed . Belmont, Massachusetts, Western

Islands, 1965 .Laurie, A. P., The Case for Germany . Berlin, Internationaler Verlag, 1939 .Markham, Reuben H., Rumania under the Soviet Yoke . Boston, Meador, 1949 .Montigny, Jean, Le Complot contre la Paix, 1935-1939 . Paris, Editiones de la

Table Ronde, 1966 .Monzie, Anatole de, Ci-devant. Paris, Flammarion, 1941 .Noulens, Joseph, Mon Ambassade en Russie Sovidtique, 1917-1919 . Paris, Plon,

1933 .Oliver, George, Roosevelt, The Man o f Yalta.Petrescu-Comnen, Nicolas, I Responsabili . Verona, 1949., Preludi del grande dramma . Roma, Edizioni Leonardo, 1947 .Polish Foreign Office, Polish White Book : Official Documents Concerning

Polish-German and Polish-Soviet Relations, 1933-1939. London, 1940.Poncins, Leon de, Les Force Secretes de la Revolution . Paris, 1933 .Potemkin, Vladimir P., Histoire de la Diplomatie . Paris, Libraire de Medicis,

1946 .Price, George Ward, Years o f Reckoning . London, Cassell & Company, Ltd.,

1939 .Prost, Henri, Destin de la Roumanie (1918-1954) . Paris, Editions Berger-

Levrault, 1954 .Rassomer, Paul, Les Responsables de la Seconde Guerre Mondiale .Rogger, Hans and Weber, Eugen, eds ., The European Right, a Historical Pro-

file . Berkeley, University of California Press, 1965 .

A Selected Bibliography

303Romanescu, Traian, Traicion al Occidente . Mexico City, 1961 ., La Internacional . Mexico City, 1962 .Romier, Lucien, Le Carrefeur des Empires Morts.Roosevelt, Elliott, As He Saw It . New York, Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1946 .Sainte-Aulaire, Auguste Comte de, Geneve contre la Paix . Paris, Plon, 1936 .Sima, Horia, Destinee du Nationalisme . tdition P.E.G. Paris, 1951 .

Europe at the Cross Roads . Munich, 1955 .Dos Movimientos Nationalistas . Madrid, 1960.L• a Crisis del Munde Libre . Ediciones Europa. Madrid, 1960 .C• azul Iorga-Madgearu . Madrid, 1961 .

Sokolov, Nicholas, Enquete Judiciaire sur l'Assassinat de la Famille Imperiale .Paris, Payot, 1924 .

Spengler, Oswald, Yahre der Entscheidung . Munich, Beck, 1933 .Sturdza, Michel, La Roumanie Peut-elle Combattre sur Deux Fronts? Lausanne,

Payot, 1916 ., Avec l'Armee Roumaine . Paris, Hachette, 1918 ., Katanga . El Occidente al Servicio del Comunismo . San Jose, Costa

Rica, Libr. Lehman, 1962 ., Open Letter to Their Excellencies . San Jose, Lehman, 1962 ., World Government and International Assassination . San Jose, Lehman,

1962. Reprinted by American Opinion, Belmont, Massachusetts, 1963 .Szembeck, Jean [Jan] Comte, journal 1933-1939, translated from the Polish

by J. Rzeweska and T. Zaleski . Paris, Plon, 1952.Tharaud, Jean and Jerome, L'Envoye de l'Archange, Paris, Plon, 1939 .Thompson, Warren S., Danger Spots in World Population . New York, Alfred

A. Knopf, 1929 .Teller, Edward, with Brown, Allen, The Legacy of Hiroshima . Garden City,

New York, Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1962.United States Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States,

Diplomatic Papers, 1944, Vol . IV, Europe.Veale, F. J . P ., Advance to Barbarism . Appleton, Wisconsin, C . C. Nelson Pub-

lishing Company, 1953 .Weizsacker, Ernst von, The Memoirs of Ernst von Weizsacker .Welch, Robert, The Politician. Belmont, Massachusetts, Belmont Publishing

Company, 1963 .X6nopol, A . D ., Histoire des Roumains de la Dacie TraJane, 2 vols. Paris, 1896 .

Index of PersonsWith Selected Biographical Sketches by the Author

Aldea, General Aurel, Rumanian Generaland Minister of Interior. Active in theCapitulation Conspiracy, lxii

Alexander I, Czar, 4Alexander II, Czar, xvAlexander John Cuza, Reigning Prince of

the United Principalities of Moldaviaand Walachia, xii, 5, 12

Alexander KaradjordjevM, King of Yugo-slavia . Assassinated in Marseilles . Irrec-oncilable enemy of Soviet Russia, xvi,xx, xxxix, 46, 47, 64-66, 77, 83, 89

Alexander Obrenovi6, King of Serbia . As-sassinated with his wife, Queen Draga,by a military conspiracy led by ColonelDimitrijevi&Apis, the man who also or-ganized the assassination of ArchdukeFrancis Ferdinand and his wife in Sera-jevo, 98n

Alexandri, Vasile, 5Alphand, Herv6, FrenchMoscow, 50

Altenburg, Dr. Gunther, German repre-sentative near the headquarters of theRumanian Exile Government in Vienna,176, 177, 260, 266, 268

Anastasia, the false Grand Duchess, 131,132

Antonescu, Ion, General then Marshal, defacto Chief of State of Rumania duringWorld War II. Delivered to the enemyby King Michael of Rumania and mur-dered by the Communist authorities .His coup d'etat against his own govern-ment was impelled only by his ownmorbid ambition, xix, xxii, lv-lvix, lx,Ixii, lxv, 31, 39, 55, 86-88, 104, 106, 111,122, 153, 154, 163, 164, 167-170, 172,

305

Ambassador to

173, 177, 179-181, 185-189, 200, 201, 204-221, 223-227, 235, 236, 242, 244-248, 252,256, 259, 263, 266, 271, 291, 293-299

Antonescu, Mihai, Minister of Justice andMinister of Foreign Affairs in GeneralAntonescu's government. Murdered withhim, Iv, lviii, lix, lx, 167, 179, 202, 205-210,246,247

Antonescu, Victor, Rumanian Minister ofForeign Affairs in Liberal Governments .Continuator of Titulescu's policy, 75, 86

Arciczewski, Miroslav, Polish Envoy inRiga and Bucharest and Undersecretaryof State at the Polish Foreign Office,xlviii, 51, 56, 92, 97, 105, 112, 124

Argesanu, Ion, General and RumanianPrime Minister, responsible for the as-sassination of more than four hundredLegionaries, 149

Argetoianu, Constantin, Rumanian politi-cian. Several times Minister of Financeand of Foreign Affairs. As Prime Minis-ter he participated actively in the per-secution of the Legionary Movement,86-88, 149

Arion, Misu, 67Astor, Lord, 92Attlee, Lord Clement R ., 271, 285Aurelian, Emperor, xAverescu, General Alexander, 36, 86Avramescu, General, Commander of Ru-manian troops on the Crimean front .Advanced a vital strategy of defensealong the line of the Moldavian Car-pathians joined with the existing Foc-sani-NAmoloasa-Galati line and theDanube Delta . Ill-advised by his Envoyin Bucharest as to the political situation

306 / Index of Persons

there, Hitler rejected the plan, 250, 251,274

Axel, Prince of Denmark, 133

Bagdad, Eleanora, 149Baldwin, Stanley, British Prime Minister,

43, 81,91BalitA, 4Banfy, Count Mikl6s, Hungarian Minister

of Foreign Affairs . Thought seriously ofa union of the crowns of Rumania andHungary, 22, 161

Barboi, Kneaz, 4Barthou, Jean, French Foreign Minister.Irreconcilable enemy of Germany. Asso-ciated with Titulescu and Benel in thepolicy of encircling Germany . Murderedin Marseilles by bullets directed at KingAlexander of Yugoslavia, xxxix, 21, 55,64, 82, 83, 91, 147, 250

Basdevant, Denise, author of the libelousbook Terres Roumaines contre Vents etMarees, 55, 211, 244, 246, 254, 263

Bassarab, Neagoe, 266Bassarab, Vladislav, xiBast, Jorgen, Danish journalist and author

of War Without Shooting, 136Basta, General George, xiiBAthory, Sigismund, King of Poland, xii,

266Beck, Colonel Jbzef, Polish Minister of

Foreign Affairs. Could not prevent, as hewould have liked, Poland's yielding tothe pressure of the Western Powers, xl,xlv, xlvi, xlviii, xlix, Iii, 75, 135-137

B€la II, King of Hungary, 3Benes, Eduard, Czecho-Slovak Minister ofForeign Affairs, Prime Minister andChief of State . Greatly responsible withTitulescu, through their unaccountableinfluence in European political matters,for the events which led the continent toWorld War II, xvi, xx, xxxii, xxxiii,xxxvii, xlvii, 17, 18, 20, 58, 60, 65, 70,75, 84, 91, 97, 147, 232, 250, 261

Beneyto, Luis, Spanish Consul General inBucharest, 97

Bengliu, General, 158Bennett, Dr . John C ., 196, 197Bernadotte, Jean Baptiste, xvBernardini, Filippo, Apostolic Nuncio inBerne. Served as contact between the

Antonescu government and the AlliedPowers, Ix

Berry, Burton Y ., United States representa-tive in Bucharest after Rumania's capit-ulation, lxiii, 230, 290, 299

Best, Dr. Werner, German High Commis-sioner in Copenhagen . Did everythingin his power in order to attenuate theweight of a foreign occupation for theDanish people, 242, 247, 248, 270

Bethlen, Count Istvan, Hungarian Minis-ter-President, 22

Bevin, Ernest, 271Bib Doda, Prenk Pacha, Albanian chief-

tain, 13Bibescu, Prince Antoine, Rumanian diplo-

mat, 63Biris, Dr. Victor, 217, 218Blum, Leon, French politician and Prime

Minister. Chief of the French SocialistParty. Called upon the French Govern-ment to require that the RumanianGovernment outlaw the LegionaryMovement, xvi, 21, 49, 56, 83, 96, 232

Bodngras, Major Emil, deserter from theRumanian Army and Communist leaderto whom King Michael handed overMarshal Antonescu, lxii

Boeru, Traian, 88, 203Boncescu, Gheorghe, 23Bonnet, Georges, French Foreign Minister .

Tried sincerely and laboriously to pre-vent World War II. Welcomed Mus-solini's proposals to stop hostilities andstart negotiations. His decision wassabotaged by Paul Reynaud's intriguesand Daladier's unreliability, 116, 145,146

Borah, Senator William Edgar, asked in aspeech of October 23, 1931 for the revi-sion of the clauses of the VersaillesTreaty relating to the Corridor, toSilesia and to war reparations, 24

Borcea, Father, Legionary Priest whofought with Franco's troops, 131

Bormann, Martin, xxiv, 124Bornemisza, Anna, 4Botez, Father, 55Bova Scoppa, Renato, Italian Envoy in

Bucharest, lviiiBoxhall, Major N., British officer, Prince

Stirbei's son-in-law, 290

Braileanu, Professor, IvBrasilach, Robert, French nationalist

writer and thinker, sentenced by one ofthe post-war kangaroo courts and exe-cuted, 29

Bratianu, Dinu, Rumanian politician .President of the Liberal Party . BackedManiu during his campaign for an un-conditional capitulation . Died in Com-munist prison, lx, lxi, lxiv, 86-88, 103,169, 245, 247, 252, 258, 259, 271, 291

Bratianu, Gheorghe, President of theLiberal Dissident Party. Insisted thatRumania declare that she would defendher Eastern frontiers . Died in Com-munist prison, xl, xlii, xlix, 67, 68, 70,72-74, 88, 93, 94, 99, 130

Bratianu, Ion, Chief of the RumanianLiberal Party . Died suddenly and rathermysteriously at the moment at whichhis presence and action would have beenmost necessary to counteract Titulescu'sand Bend 's activities in European af-fairs

Broz, Josip . See Tito, Marshal.Buckler, William H ., United States Em .bassy counselor in London sent byPresident Wilson to Stockholm to makecontact with Soviet emissaries, xxxii

Bujor, Professor N ., President of the Ru-manian Parliament. Rector of the IasiUniversity with strong Communist tend-encies, 21

Bulbec, Dr. Emil, a Legionary leader .Murdered in Italy by a gunman, 260

Bullitt, William C ., United States politi-cian and diplomat. Sent twice on mis-sions to Moscow . After having been themost vociferous advocate of friendlyrelations between his country and SovietRussia, has recognized the USSR, in twomemorable books, as the number oneenemy of Western Civilization, xxxii, 21,83, 109, 138

Bunescu, Eugeniu, 205Burckhardt, Dr. Carl J ., High Commis-sioner of the League of Nations inDanzig, 143

Burghelea, Ion, Rumanian Envoy in Al-bania, 13

Buzdugan, Gheorghe, member of the Ru-

Index o f Persons / 30'7

manian Regency after King Ferdinand'sdeath, xxxvi

Buzesti, see Niculescu-BuzestiByrnes, James F ., 259, 271

Cadere, Victor, Rumanian diplomat, 63Calinescu, Armand, Rumanian Minister of

the Interior, then Prime Minister . Mur-derer of Corneliu Codreanu, chief of theLegionary Movement and of somedozens of his comrades . Executed bynine Legionaries avenging their leader,xxxviii, xliv, xlvii, xlviii, liii, 38, 39, 69,104, 106, 111, 113, 118-120, 122, 126,127, 147-149, 157, 200, 202-204

Callahan, Charles N ., author of Washing-ton the Man and the Mason . QuotesWashington concerning the Jacobindanger in the United States, 44

Canaris, Admiral Wilhelm, Chief of theGerman Abwehr-Dienst. His treasonousactivities which had already started inthe first days of World War II werehighly instrumental in Germany's finaldefeat, xxii-xxiv, Iv, 161, 162, 178, 188,189, 191

Cancicov, lviCantacuzene, Princess Despina, General

Prince Gheorghe's sister. A Legionarylady, 233

Cantacuzene, General Prince Gheorghe,one of the most respected figures of theRumanian Army, Codreanu's right arm,xli, 28, 36, 37, 93, 94, 97, 186, 233, 2'56

Cantemir, Prince Demetrius, ReigningPrince of Moldavia, defeated by theTurks together with his ally Peter theGreat of Russia at the battle of Stani-lesti in 1713, 4, 62

Caradgea, Princess Catherine, a Rumanianlady who helped enemy prisoners escapeduring the last war . Lectures on anti-Communist themes in the United States,235, 236

Caraiani, Gheorghe, 228Carol I, King, second Reigning Prince ofthe United Principalities then firstRumanian King. From the foreign dy-nasty of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen. Awise, conscientious and valiant monarch .As Reigning Prince of Rumania led

308 / Index of Persons

victoriously her armies in the 1876-1877 war against the Turks, xiii, 163, 234

Carol II, King, grand nephew of Carol 1 .Corruption, crime and unforgivablecowardice characterized his person andhis reign, ix, x, xvi, xviii-xx, xxi, xxv,xxxv, xxxvi, xli, xlii, xliv, xlvi, xlviii,xlix, liv, IV, lvi, 12, 28, 36, 39, 49, 51, 53,54, 56, 59, 69, 71, 76, 77, 86-88, 93, 95, 97,

Carp, Petru, a leader of the RumanianConservative Party . A man of inflexibleprinciples and unshakable character, 28

Catargy, Lascar, Chief of the ConservativeParty and several times RumanianPrime Minister, 28

Catherine, Czarina, 4Ceaucescu, Nicolae, 197Cecil, Lord, 83, 110Chamberlain, Sir Austen, 141Chamberlain, Neville, British Prime Min-

ister. Wanted to avoid World War II,but could not resist the brutal pressuresof the Occult Forces, xlv-1, Iii, 69, 110,116,136-139,142-144

Charles of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, seeCarol I, King

Charles Robert, King of Hungary. De-feated by Ivanco Bassarab ReigningPrince (Voevod) of Walachia at thebattle of Posada. Then married his sonto Ivanco's daughter, xi, 266

Chateaubriand, Francois Ren6 de, illus-trious French writer and statesman .Known for his unshakable fidelity to theBourbon dynasty, 3

Chicherin, Grigori, Soviet Foreign Minis-ter . Favored a Soviet-German rapproche-ment. Prepared the Rapallo surprise,xxxii, xxxiii

Child, Richard Washburn, United StatesAmbassador in Rome and American ob-server at the Geneva Conference be-tween the Allied Powers and the SovietUnion in 1922, xxxiv

Chirnoaga, General Platon, RumanianGeneral, commander of a division on theEastern Front. Commander of the Ru-

manian National Army and War Minis-ter in the Rumanian National ExileGovernment, lxiii, lxiv, 216, 236, 244,254, 263, 265, 266

Christescu, Eugeniu, Chief of the Ruma-nian Secret Service . Served General An-tonescu, then the Communist Govern-ments, 214

Christi, Wladimir, lxiiiChristian X, King of Denmark. Faced with

wisdom and dignity the difficult times ofthe German occupation, 241

Churchill, Winston, British author andstatesman . After having been the mosteloquent and well informed enemy ofBolshevism became its greatest and mosthelpful friend . Chief gravedigger of theBritish Empire, xvi, xlvii, liii, liv, lxiii,lxiv, 1xv, 20, 49, 69, 81, 82, 92, 110, 141,230, 239, 245, 251, 258, 276, 278-280, 285,287

Ciano, Count Galeazzo, Italian ForeignMinister and Mussolini's son-in-law.Shares II Duce's responsibilities in theaggressions against Ethiopia, Albaniaand Greece, but was opposed to thatagainst France-source of all Italy's mis-fortunes . Like Mussolini, did not believeuntil the last moment that there wasanother war to come, the real one, warin the East. Died an unjust death at thehands of his father-in-law, xlvii, xlviii,liv, IV, 75, 97, 130, 160, 161, 175, 176,178-181,243

Ciubotea, 30Clemenceau, Georges, 19Clerk, Sir George R ., British Ambassador

in Paris at the moment of the reoccupa-tion of the Rhineland by Germany, 91

Codreanu, Corneliu, the legendary chief ofthe Legionary Movement . Murdered byKing Carol thirty-six hours after theKing's return from London and Paris,where he had promised the FrenchPrime Minister that he would bring Ru-mania's public opinion to accept theidea of permitting the Soviet armies toenter Rumanian territory, xvi, xxxii-xxxiv, xxxvi, xxxix, xli, xlii, xliv, xlv,xlvi, liii, 21, 26-40, 54-56, 69, 71, 76, 80,93, 94, 101, 103-106, 108-115, 118-120,122-124, 131, 148, 149, 168, 169, 173, 182,

101-106, 108, 110-114, 118-120, 122-127,129-131, 147-151, 153-160, 162-164, 167,169-172, 180, 187, 200-205, 212, 214, 216,222-225, 227, 233, 234, 235, 242, 245, 252,255

186, 200, 203-206, 212, 214, 220, 223, 232,233, 264, 267

Comnen, see Petrescu-ComnenConstantinescu, Ata, member of the Lib-eral Dissident Party and friend ofGheorghe BrStianu, 68

Coroama, General D ., Rumanian generalwho declared that he would never orderhis troops to shoot at Legionaries whenKing Carol and General Antonescuasked him if he would do it . GeneralAntonescu removed him immediatelyfrom Bucharest to a far corner of thecountry, Iv, 163, 185, 212, 214

Coulondre, Robert, French Ambassador inBerlin in 1939 . Was as reluctant as hisBritish colleague to arrange a beneficialinterview between the Polish Ambas-sador and the German Foreign Minister,Iii, liii, 134, 135

Cretzianu, Alexandru, Rumanian diplo-mat. Rumanian Envoy in Ankara in1944-1945, 67

Cretzianu, Gheorghe, father of Alexandru .Rumanian Envoy in Madrid, Washing-ton and Warsaw, Iv, 63, 290, 296

Cristea, Patriarch Miron, head of the Ru-manian autocephal orthodox Church .Used by Carol II, as Prime Minister, tocover by a theoretical respectability allhis corruption, his assassinations andmayhem, xliv, xlvii, 110, 122, 126

Crutzescu, Radu, Rumanian diplomat .Rumanian Envoy in Prague, Berlin andAnkara, 118, 147, 148

Csaky, Count Istvan, Hungarian ForeignMinister 1939-1941, 159, 184

Cuza, Professor Alexandru, leader of anationalist party, xxxiv, 33-35, 102, 103

Dabija, Prince of Moldavia, 7D'Abernon, Lord, 142Dahlerus, Birger, Swedish businessman .

Friend of Goring, sent by him to Lon-don to contact Lord Halifax in Septem-ber 1939, li

Daladier, Edouard, French Minister-Presi-dent. After formally accepting Musso-lini's proposals to stop hostilities be-tween Germany and Poland, yielded toGreat Britain's pressure and Reynaud's

Index o f Persons / 309

intrigues and rejected them, xvi, liii, 146Davidescu, Gheorghe, Rumanian diplo-

mat, 153Davies, Joseph E ., 109Davila, General Fidel, Franco's Chief of

General Staff, 96de Beauregard, Costa, 113Decebalus, xde Gaulle, General Charles, President of

the French Exile Government (LaFrance Libre) . Presently the most con-troversial figure on Europe's politicalstage, 197, 261

Degrelle, Leon, Chief of the NationalistBelgian Rex Party . Organized and com-manded the Legion Valonne on theEastern Front, 269

Delavrancea, 28de Monzie, Anatole, Minister of Justice in

the Daladier war government . Author ofCi-Devant . The book where the truth istold about how France was brought tothe mad decision of accepting to sharewith Great Britain the responsibility ofstarting a second world war . Nobodydares to read it, 117, 137, 146

de Nantouillet, Marquis, 97de Pedroso y Sturdza, Chiquita, the au-

thor's Spanish cousin, 96, 97de Pedrosa y Sturdza, Margarita, the au-

thor's Spanish cousin, 96, 97Derussi, Gheorghe, Rumanian diplomat,

63de Saint-Aulaire, Count, French Ambas-sador to Rumania and Great Britain .Author of Geneve contre la Paix, an-other of those books nobody dares toquote or even to open because it tells theforbidden truths, xxxi, liii, 2, 20

Diamandy, Gheorghe, 63Diculescu-Botez, Colonel, 15Diekhoff, Hans, 117Dimitrijevic-Apis, Colonel Dragutin, 98Dimitrov, 48Dinulescu, Major N ., Gendarmery officer,directly implicated in Corneliu Co-dreanu's assassination, 119, 120

Disraeli, Benjamin (Lord Beaconsfield),British Prime Minister and author, 43

Donici, George, died in World War I atthe age of seventy-two at the head ofone of the last cavalry charges, 16

3 1 0 / Index o f Persons

Donovan, Major William J ., 219Ddnitz, Admiral Karl, 270Dornberg, Alexander von, Chief of theProtocol Department in the GermanForeign Office, 186

Doumer, Paul, President of the FrenchRepublic, assassinated in never quiteelucidated circumstances by an insaneRussian refugee, xxxvii, 83

Draga, Queen of Serbia, murdered andbutchered with her husband, KingAlexander Obrenovil, by a group ofSerbian officers, 97, 98

Duca, Ion, Rumanian Prime Minister .Chief of the Liberal Party. Obeyedsubmissively the injunctions of theFrench Government and of NicolaeTitulescu, his Minister of Foreign Af-fairs, and started the annihilation of theLegionary Movement by thousands ofincarcerations, by murders, torture andmayhem. Was himself murdered bythree Legionaries eager to avenge theircomrades, xxxviii, xxxix, 35-37, 55-57

Duclos, J., French Communist leader, 89Duff Cooper, Sir Alfred, resigned as Ad-miralty Lord to protest against theMunich Arrangement. Great admirer ofBroz-Tito, xlvii, 116, 137

Dugan, James, see Stewart, CarrollDunn, James Clement, Director of the

European Affairs section in the UnitedStates Department of State, 292

Diirich, Josef, 17

Easterman, Alexander L ., author of thecomically libelous book Carol, Hitlerand Lupescu, 233, 234

Eden, Anthony, British Foreign Ministerand Prime Minister. After a trip toWarsaw and Moscow in April 1935 de-clared that: "It would be absurd tosuppose that Russia has any aggressiveintentions toward Poland ." With hispatron Churchill he did everything inhis power to facilitate the realization ofsuch intentions and finally abandonedthe whole of Poland to CommunistRussia. It was later under the menaceof a nuclear attack by Soviet Russia thathe was forced to resign as British Prime

Minister, xvi, xlvii, 82, 83, 91, 110, 117Eisenhower, General Dwight D ., 16, 193,

285Elefterescu, Colonel, 207, 210Emilian, 104Eugenia, Abbess, 5, 6

Fabricius, Wilhelm, German Envoy inBucharest. A favorite of King Carol andGeneral Antonescu. An enemy of theLegionary Movement, xlix, 124, 130, 157,170-173, 180, 183-185, 207, 208, 210, 211,213, 217, 220

Ferdinand I, King, second Rumanian Kingof the Hohenzollern dynasty. A popularand valiant sovereign who lead Ru-mania during World War I, whosememory is kept with reverence in theheart of every Rumanian, xxxiv, xxxv,20, 22, 51, 273

Fiessner, General, lxiiFilaliti, G ., Rumanian diplomat, 63Filipescu, Nicolae, 28Filiti, Captain G., a Rumanian cavalry

officer, 16Finsterer, Doctor, a celebrated Austrian

surgeon, 106Forrestal, James V., lxvFouch6, Joseph, xvFranasovici, Richard, Rumanian politi-

cian. Member of the Liberal Party .Served as Minister of the Interior andMinister of Public Works . Later Ru-manian Ambassador in Warsaw; aban-doned this important position just whenhis presence and activity could havebeen of most use for his country andfor Poland, at the height of the Ger-man-Polish diplomatic crisis, 92, 94, 128

Francis Ferdinand, Archduke, 13Franco, Generalissimo Francisco, savedSpain from a Communist conquest de-spite the military and political helpgiven to the Communist attempt by thebig Western Powers and Czecho-Slova-kia in full accord with the USSR, xliii,27, 96, 97, 109, 126, 216

Freud, Sigmund, 29Friesner, General Hans, Commander of theSouth Ukrainian German group ofarmies, 251

Gafencu, Grigore, Rumanian ForeignMinister 1939-1940 . Continuator ofTitulescu's policy. Refused to listen tothe warnings of the German Commandconcerning Russia's military prepara-tions at Rumania's eastern frontiers. Re-fused to listen to Hitler's insistences, de-manding for the last time, before thesignature of the Ribbentrop-MolotovAgreement, that the Rumanian Govern-ment give him the assurance that itwould not permit the Red Armies tocross Rumania's territory without re-sistance . Solicited and accepted aFranco-British guarantee limited to thewestern frontiers of Rumania, xlviii, liv,Iv, 30, 110, 124, 125, 127, 129, 130, 147,151-153, 156

Gafencu, Ion, no relation of GrigoreGafencu. A Legionary who died in aCommunist prison, 30

Gavrilas, 30Geblescu, Dan, 161George V, King of Great Britain, xli, 98,

118George VI, King of Great Britain, 138George, David Lloyd, see Lloyd George,David

Geraldine, Queen, wife of King Zogu ofAlbania, 181

Geraud, Andr6, 52, 53Gerstenberg, General Alfred, Commanderof the German Air Force in Rumania .Took the stupid initiative to bombardBucharest when King Michael's anti-aircraft artillery started bombing hissquadrons contrary to a previous ar-rangement between the King and him-self, 256

Gheorghescu, Corneliu, a Legionaryleader . Minister in the Rumanian ExileGovernment. Disappeared mysteriouslywhen trying to reach Italy after Ger-many's defeat, lxiii

Gheorghe-Stefan, Prince, 4, 262Gherovici, Colonel, directly implicated in

Codreanu's assassination, 120Ghigi, Pelegrino, Italian Envoy in Bucha-

rest, 178Ghyka, Prince Alexandru, Chief of the

Legionary police and of the National Se-curity Office, 214, 221-224

Index o f Persons / 311

Ghyka, Prince Dimitri, Rumanian ForeignMinister in the lorga Government . Hiswise policy in the question of a pact ofnon-aggression between Rumania andSoviet Russia was thwarted by Titu-lescu's intrigues and King Carol's shifti-ness, 49, 52, 53, 63, 213, 237, 240

Ghyka, Emil, 63Ghyka, Gregory Prince of Walachia, xii,

4, 262Ghyka, Grigore, 63Ghyka-Comanesti, Prince Dimitri, 5Gigurtu, Ion, Carol's last Prime Minister .

Tried to coax Hitler into more friendlyfeelings toward Rumania. Was told bythe German Fiihrer that he would neverforgive King Carol for having forcedhim to change his policy toward SovietRussia, 86, 105, 122, 159

Goethe, Wolfgang, the greatest of Germanwriters, ix, 32

Goga, Octavian, Chief of the NationalChristian Party . Prime Minister for afew weeks. Used by King Carol to wreckthe nationalist current in Rumania . Wasdismissed by him the moment Gogaunderstood what was expected of himand struck an electoral partnership withCorneliu Codreanu, xliv, 86, 102-107

Goga, Mrs. Veturia, wife of the precedent,177-178

Goring, Reichsmarschall Hermann, secondman in the National Socialist Reich . Dideverything in his power to prevent waragainst Poland. Tried in vain, until thelast moment to obtain from King Caroland his governments the promise thatthey would oppose, arms in hand, anyattempt by the Red Army to cross Ru-manian territory. Such a promise wouldhave forestalled the Soviet-Germanrapprochement which preceded the in-vasion of Poland, xxxix, xl, xlii, xliii,xlviii, xlix, li-liii, lxv, 48, 66-68, 70, 71,73, 74, 76, 130, 134, 140, 146-148, 190,252,260

Gosset, Pierre and Renee, authors of theanti-Hitler book Hitler, in which theyrecognize, nevertheless, that Hitler's lastproposals to Poland "were of an extrememoderation" and that "no Allied states-

3 1 2 / Index o f Persons

man could have honestly rejected them,"li, 140

Gourgoulov, Dr . Paul, xxxviiGrecianu, Constantin, Legionary leader .Rumanian Envoy in Berlin . Killed onthe Eastern Front, 177

Grecu, Lucia, xlviiGroza, Dimitri, Legionary leader, 213, 222Groza, Petru, leader of a small communist-

oid party. Paid a visit to Moscow. FirstPrime Minister of an entirely Commu-nist government in the last days of KingMichael's reign . Marshal Antonescu,with the complicity of the German En-voy in Bucharest, Wilhelm Fabricius,availed himself of the similarity of thetwo names to let Hitler believe that itwas the Legionary Groza who had paidthat visit, lxiv, 213, 222, 223, 237, 240,259

Grynszpan, Hershel, xlv, 117, 118Guillaume, Baron, 56Gyr, Radu, a Legionary. One of the great-est Rumanian poets, 221

Halder, General Franz, Chief of the Ger-man General Staff . A member of theCanaris conspiracy from the very firstdays of the war. Told the Nurnbergkangaroo court the whole story of hisbetrayal, xxiii, 189

Halifax, Lord, Great Britain's ForeignMinister in the Government responsiblefor Great Britain's declaration of waron Germany and the rejection of Mus-solini's proposals, li, lii, 69, 135, 136, 139

Hambar, Captain von, 15Hansen, General Erich von, Chief of theGerman military mission to Rumania1940-1941 and 1943-1944, lix, 211, 217,219

Harriman, W. Averell, United StatesAmbassador in Moscow at the end ofWorld War II. Harriman and Co.granted a loan to Lenin as early as 1920.It was strictly business and the loan wasreimbursed in due time. In 1928 Harri-man and Co. were the chief organizersof the engineering undertaking that putafoot heavy Soviet industry . It furnishedsecurities for all the Soviet purchases

in the United States and collected, ofcourse, all the commissions. Since Roo-sevelt's Administration Averell Harri-man has participated, in a leading orco-operating position, in all U .S.-Sovietdiplomatic arguments; less successfulthan in business he failed to win anyof them, lxi, 193, 293, 295

Harris, Marshal Sir Arthur, author ofBombing Offensive, 284

Hart, Captain Basil Henry Liddell, mili-tary critic and author. Remarkablyobjective and fair in his judgments,278, 284

Hartwood, Lord, 81Helene, Queen, wife of King Carol andmother of King Michael of Rumania,xxxvi, 51, 53

Henderson, Sir Nevile, Britain's Ambassa-dor in Berlin in the year of destiny,1939 . The reading of his Final Reportalone shows how little his mission wasa mission of peace. A fact that in no waycan be imputed to him, xlix, li, lii, 134-136, 140, 142, 143

Henriot, Philippe, Member of the FrenchParliament . Helped the author in hisefforts to foil Titulescu's intrigues inParis. Propaganda and InformationMinister in the P6tain Government .Was murdered by the "Resistance," 88,89

H6rriot, Edouard, several times FrenchPrime Minister. An active and subtleadvocate of the French-Soviet militaryalliance, seed of World War II, 21, 49,62, 83

Hillgruber, Andreas, 180, 208Himmler, Heinrich, Reichsfiihrer andChief of the German Police . An enig-matic personality. Committed suicidebefore being arrested, xxiv, 190

Hindenburg, Feldmarschall Paul von, oneof the most famous German soldiers .President of the German Republic . Re-luctantly brought Hitler to power,xxxvii, xxxix

Hiss, Alger, Soviet spy and traitor . Occu-pied the most confidential and impor-tant functions in two United StatesAdministrations . Roosevelt's adviserwith Harry Hopkins at the Yalta Con-

ference . One of the redactors of theUnited Nations Charter, lxiii, lxiv

Hitler, Adolf, founder of the GermanNational Socialist Party. The goal ofhis policy and of his life was always avictorious war against Communist Rus-sia and the opening of the east to Ger-man expansion . Sought persistently butin vain Britain's friendship . Fell intothe trap of a war with the WesternPowers which saved Soviet Russia andassured, probably, Communism's tri-umph over all the world, xx-xxii, xxiv-xxvi, xxxiv, xxxvii, xxxviii, xxxix, xl-xliii, xlv-liv, lvi, lvii, lix, lxii, lxiv, 48,

Hoare, Sir Reginald, British Envoy in Bu-charest, 124

Hoare, Sir Samuel, British Foreign Minis-ter . Tried with Laval to find a peacefulconclusion to the Italo-Abyssinian con-flict . Was prevented from doing so byobscure but irresistible forces mobilizedby Lord Cecil and by Anthony Eden,81, 83

Holstein, Count Bent Holstein Holstein-borg, Danish grand seigneur and patriot .Died in a "Resistance" prison, 241

Hopkins, Harry, unexplainable personal-ity . Instrument of the Occult Forces.Through his mesmeric influence uponthe moribund Roosevelt he held in hishands, for a perhaps irreparable periodof human history, the destiny of theworld, lviii, lxiii, 251

Hore-Belisha, Leslie, British Minister ofDefense in the Government that led theworld into World War II, 284

Horthy, Admiral Mikl6s von Nagybinya,Regent of Hungary. Haunted by thesecret desire to establish a Horthy dy-nasty in Hungary, 73, 266

House, Colonel Edward M ., xviHull, Cordell, United States Secretary of

State, 289, 291, 293, 2971Iuntziger, General Charles, signed with

Index of Persons / 3113

Feldmarschall Keitel the Franco-GermanConvention of Armistice, liv

Hussein, Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, 269Huston, Cloyce Kenneth, State Department

official, 294

lanulidi, 30Iasinschi, Vasile, a Legionary leader . Mem-

ber of the National Legionary Govern-ment and of the Vienna Exile Govern-ment, Iv, lxiii, 217

Il Duce, see Mussolini, BenitoIon the Implacable, 150lonescu, Lt . Colonel, 120lonic5, Professor, 149, 227lorga, Professor Nicolae, after having beenone of the most eloquent leaders ofRumanian nationalism became its mostperfidious enemy . Had a decisive re-sponsibility in Corneliu Codreanu'sassassination . The Professor's murderat the hands of agents provocateurs wasa terribly clever blow at the LegionaryMovement's prestige and reputation,xlv, 86-88, 113, 114, 149, 202, 203

Ironside, General Edmund, British Gen-eral. Hitler would have liked to havetalked to him, and through Carl Burck-hardt, asked Chamberlain to allow thisinterview. Chamberlain refused and sentthe General to Moscow to negotiate amilitary understanding with the Soviets,143, 144

Istraiti, Penait, 29luniam, Grigore, Rumanian politician . Hisideas were right; he never acted onthem, 86

Ivanco, xi

Jackson, Justice Robert H ., 190Janin, General Maurice, French Generalwho kidnapped and handed over to theCommunists, in accord with the Czecho-Slovak military leaders in Siberia, hischief, Admiral Kolchak, in exchange forone-third of the bullion of the ImperialRussian Treasury . This sum formed thefirst State Treasure of the Masar- yk-Benel government, xxxii, xxxiii, 19, 20

Jodl, General Alfred, Chief of the GermanGeneral Staff . Assassinated in Niirnberg .His last words before the gallows : "Ich

68, 70, 71, 73, 74, 75, 76, 81, 82, 110, 113,115, 116, 118, 120-124, 129, 130, 135, 136,140, 142-144, 146, 148, 151, 159, 160, 173,178, 180, 181, 183-186, 189, 190, 210, 213,214, 217, 219, 226, 232, 240, 243, 246, 250,251, 256, 265, 270, 283-285

314 / Index of Persons

griisse dich mein Deutschland!", lxv,190, 191

Johnson, Lyndon B ., 195Jora, Antioche, 7Jora, Princess Dafina, wife of Prince Dab-

ija, Reigning Prince of Moldavia, mid-seventeenth century, 7

Jora, Maria, 7

Kahn, Otto, 23Kalinin Mikhail Ivanovich, President of

the Soviet Republic . A mere figurehead,xxxviii, 55, 83

Kanya, Kalman, Hungarian Foreign Min-ister, 73, 266

Keitel, Feldmarschall Wilhelm, Chief ofthe German High Command . Assassi-nated at Nurnberg. His last words be-fore the gallows : "I am happy, I amjoining my two sons ." Both of Keitel'ssons had fallen on the Eastern Front,liv, lxv, 188-191

Kem6ny, Baron L., Hungarian ForeignMinister in the Szdlasi Government .Took refuge in the British zone of oc-cupation. Was delivered by the Britishauthorities to the Communists andhanged by them, 266, 267

Kennard, Sir Howard, British Ambassadorin Warsaw. Conforming to instructionsreceived, did not communicate to thePolish Government Germany's proposalsreceived and transmitted by his col-league in Berlin, xlvii, Iii, 135, 136, 139,143

Keppler, Wilhelm, Undersecretary of Statein the German Foreign Office, 164

Kerensky, Alexander, xxxi, 14-16, 18, 212Khrushchev, Nikita, one of Communist

Russia's dictators . Under a certain bon-homie was as abject and cruel as all theothers, 285, 287

Killinger, Baron Manfred von, GermanEnvoy in Bucharest. Denied the exist-ence of any capitulation conspiracyamong Rumanian politicians . Commit-ted suicide before the entrance of theCommunist troops in Bucharest, an en-trance engineered by this conspiracy,lvii, lviii, Ix, 208, 217, 220, 222, 251

Kolchak, Admiral Aleksandr Vasilievici,Chief of the Russian National Resist-

ance. Kidnapped and delivered to theCommunists by his subordinate, theFrench General Janin, xxxii, xxxiii,lxv, 19, 20, 83, 127

Kollontai, Aleksandra, Mikhailovna, So-viet Ambassador in Stockholm, 247

Kornilov, General Lavr, xxxi, 16Krishner, Leonard, author of Prisoner ofRed Justice . British subject, several yearsin the Communist Rumanian prisons.Describes the terrible treatment of theprisoners and especially of the Legion-aries, 194, 231

Kronne, Major, 13Kun, Bela, Hungary's Communist dictator,one of the most sadistic Communistleaders. His regime was crushed andHungary saved from Communism by theRumanian armies, despite the SupremeCouncil's protection, xxxii, 19, 20, 127,232, 266

Kutiepov, General, recognized chief of theRussian anti-Communist refugee organ-izations . Kidnapped by the Soviets inthe middle of the day upon Paris boule-vards. Spirited to Moscow and killed,xliv, 83, 127

Lacour-Gayet, G ., 14Lahovary, Alexandru-Emmanuel, Ruman-

ian Envoy in Paris and Rome, 63Lahovary, Ion, Rumanian statesman.

Leader of the Conservative Party, 28, 63Lahovary, Jack, 28Laval, Pierre, several times French Foreign

and Prime Minister. Tried to find apeaceful end to the Italo-Abyssinianconflict . Was never forgiven for that .After a certain resistance, signed theFranco-Soviet pact of military assistancewhich fathered World War If andbrought him finally before a firingsquad, 83, 91

Lawrentiev, Soviet Envoy in Bucharest,209

Leahy, Admiral William D ., Admiral inthe United States Navy, 292

Leger, Alexis, permanent General Secre-tary at the French Foreign Office . Withhis British corresponding number, LordVansittart, formed a most efficient war-mongering team, liii, 91

Lehman, Governor Herbert, xxxiLenin, Vladimir Ilich Ulyanov, the first ofRussia's Communist dictators. One ofthe greatest scourges known to humanhistory . We are still living in the pesti-lence he spread and, perhaps, veryslowly dying of it, xv, xxxi, xxxii, 16, 19,47, 54, 58, 91, 96

Le Rougetel, John, lxiii, 290, 299Lindbergh, Colonel Charles A., the hero

of the first Atlantic crossing by air . De-graded by President Roosevelt because,with Congressman Hamilton Fish andSenator Hiram Johnson, he was amongthe few who tried to tell the truth to theAmerican people about Roosevelt's realintentions, 23

Lipski, JBzef, Poland's Ambassador in Ber-lin until the beginning of German-Po-lish hostilities. He had to obey theorders of his Government and conscien-tiously refused to start any discussionor negotiations whatever when he metRibbentrop for the last time, xxxviii, xl,xlv, xlvi, xlviii, li, Iii, 134-136, 139-143

Litvinov, Maxim, Soviet Minister of For-eign Affairs . With Titulescu's and Ben-e§'s help stirred with cleverness theTrojan Horse policy to climax theFranco-Soviet and Czecho-Soviet pacts ofmutual assistance, primus motos ofWorld War II, xxxii, 50, 60-62, 64, 71,99

Lloyd George, David, Prime Minister ofGreat Britain . Had his responsibility inthe final triumph of Bolshevism andmost specially in the assassination ofthe Russian Imperial Family, xvi, 19, 98,141

Locky, Robert, Sergeant in the UnitedStates Army, 235, 236

Londonderry, Lord, opposed in the Houseof Lords the policy of Germany's en-circlement, 116

Lothian, Lord, did the same as Lord Lon-donderry in the House of Commons,where Churchill had stated that theencirclement of a possible aggressor isno encirclement, 81, 92

Louis the Great, King of Hungary, xiLouis XIII, King of France, 4

Index of Persons / 315

Ludendorff, General Erich von, GermanGeneral known for his victories on theEastern Front in World War I. For awhile, Hitler's partisan, xxxiv

Ludwig, Colonel, 262Lukasievici, Juliusz, Polish Ambassador in

Paris. Wary about the trap in whichPoland was about to fall, 137, 138

Lunacharski, Anatoli Vasilievich, xxxiLupescu, Magda Wolff, alias Elena, King

Carol's established mistress, then legiti-mate spouse, and Rumania's greatestnuisance, xxxvi, Iv, 28, 51, 53, 101, 171,233, 234, 242

Lvov, Prince Georgi, formed with Keren-sky the first revolutionary governmentin Russia, xxxi

MacDonald, J . Ramsay, 49, 81Macoveanu, Major, directly implicated in

Codreanu's assassination, 119, 120MacVeagh, Lincoln, United States Repre-

sentative in Cairo, 289, 291-293, 296,297

Madgearu, Virgil, Rumanian politician .Member of the National Peasant Party.Wantonly assassinated by agents pro-vocateurs, 202

Mafalda, Princess of Italy, 257Maiorescu, Titus, 28Manciu, Iasi's prefect of police . Maniacpersecutor and torturer of Legionaries .Killed by Corneliu Codreanu in self-defense, xxxiv, 33, 34, 37

Mandel, Georges, former private secretaryof Clemenceau . With Paul Reynaud,forced Daladier first to declare war onGermany, then to repudiate his first ac-ceptance of Mussolini's conciliatory pro-posals, xvi, liii, 92

Maniu, luliu, declared that he preferredSoviet Russia as an occupying power toGermany as an ally, and acted accord-ingly . Regularly passed military infor-mation to the enemy all during Ru-mania's fight against the Soviets . Or-ganized, with King Michael, the kid-napping of Marshal Antonescu and theunconditional capitulation of Rumania .All that can be said in his defense isthat he was probably fooled by falseAllied promises and that his intelligence

316 / Index o f Persons

was a very limited one. Died in a Com-munist prison, lix-lxiv, 86-88, 102, 103,114, 202, 203, 245, 247, 252, 258, 259, 271,290,291,293-297,299

Mannerheim, Marshal Carl von, 227, 239Manoilescu, Grigore, brother of Mihai

Manoilescu . A Legionary leader. Minis-ter in the Rumanian Exile Government .

Manoilescu, Mihai, Rumania's ForeignMinister in the last days of Carol's reign,lxiii, 122, 159, 176

Mao Tse-tung, Communist China's boss .Philosopher and tactician of Communistaction and propaganda. Stages with amaster-hand the pretended China-Russia antagonism and the fake innerstrifes in continental China, 191, 285

Marie, Queen of Rumania, wife of KingFerdinand. As beloved and respected asher husband by all Rumanians, xxxiv,22, 51, 65,101, 273

Marin, Vasile, a Legionary leader . Fell inSpain fighting with Franco's troops, 55,100

Marinescu, Gavril, Chief of the Rumaniangendarmerie. Police Prefect of Bucha-rest. Sub-secretary of the Public SecurityDepartment. One of Carol's most effi-cient killers, 104, 111, 118, 120, 122

Marshall, General George C ., United StatesChief of Staff. Handed over continentalChina to the Communists . His name isindelibly attached to the Pearl Harborplots, 251, 271

Marshall, Louis, 23Marty, Andre, 20Marx, Karl, xvMary, Queen of Great Britain, xli, 118Masaryk, Jan, son of Tome Masaryk .

Czecho-Slovakia's Foreign Minister afterWorld War II. Had, or pretended tohave, the same tender feelings for theSoviets as his father. Was helped bytheir agents through a window, con-forming to local traditions, xxxiii

Masaryk, Tome, President of the Czecho-Slovak Republic . Great protector of in-cipient Bolshevism and great friend ofCommunist Russia, 17,19

Matthias Corvinus, King of Hungary, ofRumanian origin. His strifes and that ofhis father Hunyadi Jinos with Stefan

the Great of Moldavia and Vlad theImpaler of Walachia, complicated bythe continuous interferences of theKings of Poland into Moldavian affairs,prevented all these Christian monarchs,despite their gallant efforts, from win-ning a final and decisive victory overthe Turks, xii, 266

Mavrocordato, Lieutenant Prince Alexis,the author's brother-in-law . Killed in ac-tion during the fighting with the Bol-shevik troops, 14, 15

Mavrocordato, Edgard, 63McCarthy, Joseph R ., United States Sena-

tor, fearless and tireless defender of hiscountry against Communist infiltrationand conquest . Hated the world over byall "liberal" groups and organizations .Died a sudden death, 191, 234

Micescu, Istrate, 104Michael, Grand Duke, brother of Czar

Nicholas II, xxxiMichael, the Valiant, Reigning Prince of

Walachia, 1593-1601, then Monarch fora short while of the three principalitiesWalachia, Moldavia and Transylvania .He had beaten the Turkish armies andwas pursuing them south of the Danube .Attacked by his Hungarian neighbor heabandoned the pursuit. Both BAthoryand Michael fell in the fighting thatensued between Christians, xii, xxxiv,266,273

Michael I, King of Rumania. Precededand followed his father, Carol II .Engineered with politicians who weremuch older than he and who must bearthe greatest part of the responsibilities,the coup of false armistice, whichtreacherously disarmed the Rumaniantroops, and the delivery to the enemyof their Commander-in-Chief, x, xix,xxxv, Iv, lx-lxv, 51, 53, 150, 154, 156,160, 169, 173, 221, 222, 224, 247, 248,252, 254, 257-259, 261, 272, 273

Michael Apaffy, Prince of Transylvania, 4Mihailovich, General Draia, the hero of

the Yugoslavian resistance. Delivered tothe Communists in an operation verysimilar to that performed by GeneralJanin. Killed by Tito with the approval

of the London Times, xxvi, lxi, lxv, 20,239

Milan, King of Serbia, 98Miller, Russian General who replacedGeneral Kutiepov as the head of Rus-sian nationalist organizations. Was kid-napped like him in full daylight on theboulevards of Paris, and like himspirited to a French port and a Sovietship without any interference of theFrench police, xliv, 83, 127

Mircea the Old, xiMironescu, Gheorghe, Rumanian Foreign

Minister, 46, 86Misu, Nicola, 63Mitilineu, Charles, 63Mitilineu, Ion, Rumanian Foreign Minis-

ter, 86Molotov, Vyacheslav, Soviet Foreign Minis-

ter. Was called the accountant of theRevolution. In 1933 in a speech inOdessa, he had already counted about20,000,000 Russian "bourgeois" liqui-dated by the Revolution . Many thinkthat this figure was even then too con-servative, xxxviii, lxi, 128, 129, 183, 184,279, 293, 295

Montgomery, General Bernard, 251Morocco, Sultan of, 64Morusov, N., Soviet citizen . Head of the

Rumanian Department of State Securityand of the Information Service of theRumanian Army under King Carol'sregime, 157, 162, 188, 189

Moscicki, Ignacy, President of the PolishRepublic. The person responsible withMarshal 9migly-Rydz for Poland's suici-dal policy in the last months of 1939,136,147

Mota, Ion, Legionary leader . Killed inSpain fighting with Franco's troops, 33,39,100

Moyne, Lord, British Ambassador in Cairo,292

Miller, Heinrich, xxivMiller, Captain Josef, 161, 162, 188, 189Munch, Edvard, Danish Minister of For-

eign Affairs, 148Murphy, Justice Frank, tried to save thehonor of American military and civiljustice in his admirable and memorable

Index of Persons / 317

dissenting judgment in the trial of Gen-eral Yamashito, 286

Murphy, Robert D ., political adviser inthe United States Department of State,lxii, 298

Mussolini, Benito, Italy's Duce. To hiscredit : his proposed Quadripartite Pactwhich would have assured peace be-tween non-Communist powers, ruinedby France's refusal to ratify it, and hisdesperate last moment efforts to stopthe German-Polish hostilities, torpedoedby the British Government. Heavilyto his debit : the ridiculous and cowardlyaggression against already defeatedFrance. Was killed and hanged by thefeet like pork in a butcher shop by thetriumphant "Resistance," xx, xxii, xxx-viii, Iii-liv, lvi, lix, lx, lxiv, 48, 49, 81,87, 130, 145, 151, 160, 178-181, 190, 2116,243, 247, 248, 286

Mutsuhito, Emperor, 29

Nan, Kneaz, 4Nathalie, Queen of Serbia. Wife of King

Milan ObrenoviE and grand-daughter ofPrince John Alexander Sturdza, Reign-ing Prince of Moldavia, 96-98

Negri, Constantin, Rumanian patriot andstatesman. Refused the crown of Mol-davia offered to him by the Moldavianboyards . Served faithfully the man whoaccepted it, and worked successfully forthe union of the two principalities un-der the same crown, 5

Negrfn, Juan, 75Neubacher, Dr . Hermann, German Charge

d'Affaires in Bucharest, lvii, 217Neurath, Baron Konstantin von, GermanForeign Minister and High Commis-sioner in Czecho-Slovakia, xli, 90

Nicholas II, Czar, xxxi, xxxii, 98Nicolas, Prince, second son of King Ferdi-nand and Queen Marie of Rumania .Had nothing to do with the crimes andthe corruption of his brother's reign orwith the shameful betrayal that endedthe reign of his nephew, xxxv

Niculescu, Nicoleta, head of the Women'sLegionary Organization . Savagely tor-tured, then raped, then killed by Ar-mand Calinescu's agents, xlviii

318 / Index of Persons

Niculescu-Buzesti, Grigore, RumanianForeign Minister . Helped the politicians'conspiracy which delivered his countryunconditionally to the enemy, 110, 155,252, 253, 295, 299

Noel-Buxton, Lord, 141Noulens, Joseph, French Ambassador inMoscow. Author of Mon Ambassade enRussie Sovietique . A book that allstudents of modern history ought tohave read but ignored by all of them,1, 19

Novikov, N. V., Soviet Ambassador inEgypt, 296

Olga, Grand Duchess, 18, 131, 132Orlando, Vittorio, 18Orleanu, Senator M., protested in the Ru-

manian Senate against Titulescu's pro-Soviet policy, 99

Ostrowsky, Soviet Envoy in Bucharest, 69Owsley, Alvin M., United States Envoy toDenmark, 133

Pancu, Constantin, xxxiii, 32Pantazi, General Constantin, Minister ofNational Defense in the National Le-gionary Government, Iv, 168

Papen, Franz von, 170Pi tr3scanu, Lucretiu, 252Patton, General George S ., 1xv, 251Paul-Boncour, Joseph, several times

French Minister of Foreign Affairs andPrime Minister . Tells in his memoirshow King Carol promised him that hewould come to an understanding withSoviet Russia concerning the passage ofthe Soviet troops across Rumanian terri-tory in case of a war with Germany,xvi, xlvi, 71

Paul Karadjeordjevh, Prince Regent ofYugoslavia. Overthrown by the militaryconspiracy that wantonly threw Yugo-slavia into World War II and finallyinto the hands of butcher Broz-Tito, 219

Pavelescu, General, 123Pavelescu, Gheorghe, Legionary leader .Murdered by King Carol after Codrea-nu's assassination, 123

Pepeliaev, Victor, xxxiii, 20

Perth, Justus, 176Pertinax, see Geraud, Andr6P6tain, Marshal Henri, 87, 90Peter, King of Yugoslavia, lxi, 219Peter the Great, 4Petrea, 262Petrescu, Titel, 252Petrescu-Comnen, Nicolas, RumanianMinister in Berlin ; receiver throughGoring of Germany's friendly proposalsto Rumania. Decided, or forced underpressure, to participate in the work ofsabotaging the essential interests of hiscountry, xxxix, xli-xliii, 66-76, 111, 115,182

Petrovicescu, General Constantin, Minis-ter of the Interior in the National Le-gionary Government. One of the victimsof Antonescu's coup against his owngovernment. Passed from Antonescu'sprisons into those of the Communistswhere he died, Iv, Ivi, 36, 170, 214, 221,266

Pike, Albert, xvPilsudski, Marshal J6zef, Poland's strongman whose death proved to be an ir-reparable loss for his country, the manwho replaced him turning out to bean unmitigated blockhead, 1, liii, 49, 82,94, 124, 146, 148

Pion, Colonel, Military State Attorney inanti-Legionary trials, 222, 223

Pius XII, His Holiness, received GeneralAntonescu and his Foreign Minister inaudience, 181

Pop, Valer, 176Popa, Ion, Prefect of Bucharest during the

National Legionary Government, 215Porumbaru, J., Rumanian Foreign Minis-

ter, 13Potemkin, Vladimir, Soviet Russia's offi-

cial historian, 48, 64, 66, 83, 84Potocki, Count Jerzy, Poland's Ambassa-dor to the United States as well in-formed and wary as his colleague Luka-sievici about the Western Powers' in-trigues and the danger they representedfor Poland, 138

Presnan, Marshal, 86Primo de Rivera, General Miguel, 62Prost, Henri, author of the libelous book :Destin de la Roumanie, 55, 56, 58, 61,

62, 84, 101, 102, 108, 125, 126, 148, 151,155, 204, 205, 211, 253

Protopopescu, Professor Ion, Iv, 275

Racovitza, General, helped the enemy toinvade his country and capture hisarmies. Participated in all phases of thegreat betrayal that led to Rumania'sunconditional capitulation, lxii, 245, 252,257

R5descu, General Nicolae, a political non-entity. Prime Minister of the last not-entirely-Communist Rumanian Govern-ment. Understood what a Soviet victorymeant for his country only when he wasforced, as Rumanian Prime Minister, totake refuge, on the double, in the Brit-ish Legation in Bucharest, lxiii, lxiv,259, 274, 275

Rado, Alexander, xxiiiRSdulescu, Savel, Titulescu's factotum .King Michael's adviser in the lastmonths of his reign, 67, 252

Rahabinode Pal, justice, delivered a dis-senting judgment in General Yamashi-ta's trial in which he laid down that"The farce of a trial of vanquishedleaders by the victors was in itself anoffense against humanity," 286

Ramsay, Sir Patrick, British Envoy toDenmark. A clever head and a charm-ing personality, 132

Randa, Alexandru, a Legionary leader anddistinguished historian, 176, 177, 218,220

Rath, Ernst vom, xlv, 117, 118, 120Renthe-Fink, Cecil von, 130, 146, 270Reynaud, Paul, French Minister of For-eign Affairs and Prime Minister. Tor-pedoed the last chance of sparing hu-manity World War II by forcing Dala-dier to repudiate the already officiallygiven acceptance of Mussolini's propos-als . He bears with Georges Mandel, bythe part they played at that moment inthe councils of the French Government,the chief responsibility for the misfor-tunes that overcame France. However itwas Marshal Petain who died in prisonand Laval who was shot, xvi, liii, 21, 146

Ribbentrop, Joachim von, Germany's For-eign Minister . The proposals he was

Index of Persons / 319

ready to submit to a Polish negotiatorwere fair and moderate. The PolishAmbassador was not allowed by hisGovernment even to take cognizance ofthem. Joachim von Ribbentrop was oneof the victims of the five hangmen ofNurnberg, xlii, xlv-xlviii, li, Iii, Iv, lxv,117, 118, 128, 129, 134-136, 139-141,143, 160, 161, 164, 175, 176, 184-186, 189,210, 213, 222, 239, 240, 242, 248

Rogger, Professor Hans, with ProfessorEugen Weber editors of The EuropeanRight, 8, 25, 106, 222, 234, 236, 237

Roggieri, Minister, member of the Com-mission which investigated Hungarianexcesses in Transylvania, 176, 177

Roosevelt, Eleanor, 96Roosevelt, Eliott, Mama's rover boy.Fought World War II as his father'scrutch . Wrote a book about it . Tells usabout Roosevelt's and Stalin's projectsfor a better and greater Katyn, andabout Churchill's laudable indignation,303

Roosevelt, Franklin Delano, President ofthe United States. Introduced defini-tively Soviet Russia into European andWorld politics as a pawn against Ger-many and Japan . Chose the Pearl Har-bor Road to reach Berlin . With hisfriend Churchill distributed eleven Eu-ropean countries to the Kremlin butch-ers. Allowed them to uproot millions ofinnocent and humble people from theirnative lands. All the while preparingthe ruin of his allies' (Britain, France,Holland) empires. Might have been, inhis last days at least, a pseudo-lucidezombi in the hands of Hopkins, Morgen-thau, Hiss and others, xxxviii, xlvi, lviii,lx, lxi, lxiii, lxiv, 55, 83, 109, 110, 117,219, 230, 239, 245, 258, 279, 285, 287

Rosenberg, Alfred, xxiii, xxivRosetti, Alice, 112Rosianu, Major Scarlat, a gendarmerie of-

ficer directly implicated in Codreanu'sassassination, 119

Rosting, Helmer, Vice President of theDanish Red Cross. Former High Com-missioner in Danzig for the League ofNations. Was never forgiven by theOccult Forces for having cleverly

320 / Index of Persons

avoided an armed conflict in that citybetween Germans and Poles. Committedsuicide in a Danish Resistance prison,143,241

Rothermere, Lord, 81Runciman, Lord Walter, sent by theBritish Government on a mission togather information in Czecho-Slovakiaand Germany, came back with the rightanswer, 116

Rusk, Dean, 193

Sadoul, Captain Jacques, 20SAnatescu, General Constantin, one of theRumanian generals who betrayed theirown soldiers and helped kidnap and de-liver to the enemy their own Com-mander-in-Chief. Rumania's Prime Min-ister, August-December 1944, lxii, 252,259,299

Sapuppo, Signor Giuseppe, 130, 160, 240Sarbu, Sergeant, a gendarmerie subalternwho strangled Codreanu with his ownhands, 79

Sarraut, Albert, as Minister of the In-terior of France cancelled the measureswhich had been taken for the protectionof King Alexander of Yugoslavia. AsPrime Minister of France was responsi-ble for the ratification of the Franco-Soviet Pact of Mutual Assistance. Ac-cording to most reliable witnesses, didnot know at that time that Germanyand Russia had no common frontiers .Learned it with the re-occupation ofthe Rhineland by Hitler's troops, 64,65, 83, 89, 90

Scavenius, P ., Danish Foreign Minister atthe time of the German occupation .Managed with cleverness and dignitythis painful situation, 241

Schallburg, Captain Christian von, Danishofficer. Lead the Danish Legion on theEastern Front. Fell heroically at itshead, 241, 249, 256

Schiff, Jacob, 23Schina, General, Commander of a Ru-manian Cavalry division during WorldWar I, 15

Schleicher, General Kurt von, Germanpolitician and soldier. Favored a Ger-man-Soviet understanding . Opposed

Hitler's coming to power . Was or wasnot conspiring against him when Hin-denburg accepted Hitler as Chancellor .Murdered by Hitler's S. S . FrauSchleicher also fell under the bulletsdirected against her husband, xl

Schmidt, Dr. Paul, 188Schunke, Colonel, German Military At-

tach6 in Bucharest . Bearer of one ofthe numerous friendly German openingstowards Rumania regularly ignored ortorpedoed by all Rumanian Govern-ments, xlii, 72

Scoppa, Bova, see Bova ScoppaSeicaru, Pamfil, Rumanian journalist . Di-

rector of Curentul . Backed King Carolall the way. Backed General Antonescu .Found himself on the patriotic side ofaffairs in the moment of the betrayal ofthe Rumanian Army . Had been one ofthe most fierce enemies of the LegionaryMovement. Changed completely his at-titude towards it when realizing howright its leaders had been, 252

Sheba, Jan, Czecho-Slovak Envoy in Bu-charest. Wanted Rumania to stretch outthe red carpet for the Red Army andordered the Rumanian Government ac-cordingly, 97-99

Sikorski, General Wladyslaw, Commander-in-Chief of the Polish troops. Died in astrange accident in which only the pilotof the plane in which he was flying withhis daughter survived, 279

Sima, Horia, Codreanu's successor at thehead of the Legionary movement. VicePresident of the National LegionaryGovernment. President of the RumanianExile Government, xix, liv, Iv, Ivii, lxii,lxiii, 31, 39, 40, 131, 158, 159, 163-166,170, 171, 200, 201, 205, 210-212, 217, 218,239, 242, 243, 247, 248, 257, 263, 273, 274

Simon, Sir John, as British Foreign Minis-ter showed a moderate and pacifyingspirit in matters of Japanese and Ger-man affairs, 49, 81, 91

Simovic, General Dulan, Ivii, 219Singheorghe, Professor Ion, non-Legionarymember of the Rumanian Exile Govern-ment. A former adversary of the Move-ment became one of its most faithfulfriends, lxiii

Skorzeny, Obersturmbannfiihrer Otto,hero of the fantastic rescue of Musso-lini . Commander of a division on theWestern Front. One of the Germanofficers who, true to German militarytradition, fought to the very last pos-sibilities and did not discuss the ordershe received, 181

Slawek, Colonel Walery, opposed Marshal8migly-Rydz's and President Mo§cicki'spolicy . Ended by a strange suicide withtwo bullets in his body, 1

9migly-Rydz, Marshall Edward, to Po-land's misfortune became Poland'sleader at the death of Marshal Pilsud-ski, xxi, xliii, Iii, 134, 136, 147, 219

Smuts, Jan Christiaan, 20Sorge, Richard, xxiiiSosnkowski, General Kazimierz, SupremeCommander of the Polish troops. Toldhis troops on the Italian Front that Po-land had been brought to fight by thepressures of Great Britain. Was re-lieved of his Command, liii

Sotelo, Calvo, 95Spaight, J . M., author of Bombing Vindi-

cated, in which he tries to do just thatwith disputable success, 283, 284

Stalin, Joseph, xxiii, xxxi, lx, lxiii, 46, 82,91, 245, 251, 254, 258, 265, 279, 280, 293

Stargewski, Minister, Polish Minister toDenmark, 132

Stassen, Harold, 193Stauning, Thorvald, Denmark's Prime

Minister. Died before the end of theWar and of German occupation . Wouldhave exercised a moderating influenceupon the events that accompanied theliberation of the territory, 241

Stefan the Great, Reigning Prince of Mol-davia. The great hero of Moldavianhistory. Fought forty-three battlesagainst his various enemies. Erected achurch or a monastery after each ofthem, victory or defeat. At Rahova,January 1475, with an army of 60,000men defeated and routed a Turkisharmy of about twice that number . Itwas one of the greatest victories, if notthe greatest, by the number of troopsengaged, won by Christian Princes overthe Moslems, xii, 4, 150

Index o f Persons / 321

Stefan, Lapusneanu, one of the descend-ants of Stefan the Great. Cruel but effi-cient, 150

3tef$nik, General Milan, second personal-ity in the triumvirate that created theCzecho-Slovak State. Killed by his ownanti-aircraft artillery, xxxii, xlvii, 17, 18,20,83

Steffens, Lincoln, xxxiiSteflea, General Stefan, Chief of the Ru-

manian General Staff. As he told it him-self, during the Antonescu trial, fromthe first days of the war he sabotagedthrough delays and other provoked dif-ficulties the supplying of our armies inmen and materiel, 1xii, 173, 245, 252, 257

Stewart, Carroll, with his pal James Duganwrote one of the most brazenly menda-cious books about Rumania : TidalWave, 234

Stirbei, Prince Barbu, Maniu's and DinuBratianu's emissary in Cairo, Wiselyrecommended, however, negotiationswith Marshal Antonescu, the head ofthe Government . Was finally submergedby agents of the political oppositionwho accepted unconditional surrenderprovided they would be allowed to re-turn to party life in Rumania, lx, lxi,290-292, 295, 297, 298

Stoicanescu, Constantin, a Legionaryleader . Shot down in enemy anti-air-craft artillery when carrying out animportant mission in occupied Ru-mania, 239, 260

Stoidadinovici, 75Stomoniakov, Ambassador, Soviet-Russia's

delegate at the Riga negotiations for aRumano-Soviet Pact of non-aggression,50-53

Streicher, Julius, 203Stresemann, Gustav, German Chancellor.A wise politician whose peace-aimingefforts were wrecked by the WesternPowers' intransigence, 48, 142

Sturdza, Prince John, the author's brother.Lieutenant in the Imperial Russianarmies. Killed in action fighting withthe Bolshevik troops, 14, 15

Sturdza, other members of the family men-tioned in Chapter I and II .

Suaza, Princess Ruspoli di Pogio, 5

322 / Index o f Persons

Suleiman, xiiSvetcovie, Drafa, 219Szfilasi, Ferenc, Chief of the HungarianMovement. Last non-Communist PrimeMinister of Hungary. Handed over tothe Communists by the British Com-mand and hanged, 266, 267

Szembeck, Count Jean, Undersecretary ofState in the Polish Foreign Office. For-merly Polish Envoy in Bucharest . Haswritten a "Journal." A wise and in-formed diplomat who, as many others,was not given the opportunity to in-fluence Poland's decisions in the crucialyears preceding the German-Polisharmed conflict, xl, xlii

Tabouis, Genevieve, author of the bril-liant Tutenkanem et son Temps. Aban-doned, regrettably, her Egyptologiststudies for more modern politics. As ajournalist counts among the most fiercewarmongers, 64, 66, 92

T3tarescu, Gheorghe, Rumanian ForeignMinister and several times Prime Minis-ter. Followed Titulescu's policy. AfterRumania's occupation by the Sovietstried to protest against the Communistabuses. Ended, for a few years, in theirprisons. Is today one of their pitiablezombies, 75, 102, 103, 110

Teleki, Count Pal, Hungary's Prime Min-ister . Saw the unavoidable Communisttriumph accompanying Hitler's errorsand the Western Powers' victory. Pre-ferred not to live in those times andcommitted suicide, 22, 159, 161, 180, 184

Tetea, 30Tharaud, Jean and Jerome, French au-

thors of Quand Israel est Roi describingthe horrors of the Bela Kun regime inHungary . In their literary and politicalevolution were brought to write thelibelous anti-Legionary book L'Envoydde l'Archange, 232

Thiers, Louis Adolphe, 102Thompson, Colonel, 13Tiso, Monsignor J6sef, Slovak patriot .

Passed several years in Bend 's prisons .Slovak Chief of State . Hanged as a mat-ter of course by the victors, xlvii

Tito, Josip Broz, nobody exactly knows

his name. Churchill's and Roosevelt'sgreat favorite . The butcher of thousandsand thousands of his compatriots. To-day the Chief of State of Yugoslavia andthe fair-haired boy of Western chancel-leries. Was helped with more than threebillion dollars by the United Statesalone, and with the most modern arma-ment by all the Western Powers, lxi,lxv, 20, 239, 285

Titulescu, Nicolae, with his friend Benel,with the Anonymous Forces behindthem, ruled for years European policy .We are still following the seeminglyirreversible impulse they have helpedto give the affairs of the world, xvi, xx,xxv, xxxvii, xxxviii, xxxix, xli, xlii, 51-72, 84-88, 91, 95, 99, 111, 124, 127, 154-156,167,169,202,234,255,295

Tolbukhin, Marshal Feodor lanovich, 154,254

Tomitk, Captain, a Rumanian official .Wanted to help but did not dare, 227

Trajan, Emperor, xTrevor-Roper, Professor H . R ., after care-

fully studying the German archives, hadthe courage to come to the conclusionthat Hitler did not want any other warthan that against Communist Russiaand that it was not Hitler who declaredwar on Britain and France but the otherway around . . . a thing many peopleknew already, xx, 121

Tripier, Jean, French Envoy in Riga andAmbassador to Argentina, 51

Trotsky, Leon Bronstein, his strife withStalin was not a conflict of doctrine oreven of methods. Trotskyism and Stalin-ism or Marxist-Leninism will alwaysemploy the methods most adequate withmoment and circumstances : corruptionand infiltration, or violence and con-spiracy. It was a conflict of two per-sonalities striving for the first place ."Trotskyism" is one of the red herringsoffered to gullible Western minds . . .like that big fight between giants, Russiaand China, which furnishes both Com-munist Powers with a wonderful mutualalibi, xv, xxxi, 16, 19, 24

Truman, President Harry, fought the firstno-win war in Korea against Communist

China, but had taken previously theprecaution of handing over the wholeof China to the Communists . One ofthose unfathomable political mysterieswith which the modern public mind hashad to become accustomed, 271, 280, 285

Tukhachevski, Marshal Mikhail, RussianMarshal, partisan of a military Rapallobetween Germany and Russia andsecretly preparing a Russia of his mak-ing. This combination did not pleasethe people he took into his confidencein London and Paris. That is how heended in the Lubianka prison with thetraditional bullet in his nape, xliii

Ureche, Great Vornic Nistor, Moldavianstatesman and chronicler in the middleof the sixteenth century, 7

Vaida-Voevod, Alexandru, RumanianPrime Minister . Member of the Na-tional Peasant Party. Sometimes op-posed Maniu . Always totally devoted toKing Carol, xxxvii

Vanger, 129Vansittart, Lord Robert, as Permanent

Secretary of the British Foreign Officealways took great care to keep an openpossibility for a British-German con-flict . The probable inventor of theshrewd dismissing formula with whichGreat Britain answered Mussolini's lastmoment efforts to prevent a war be-tween non-Communist powers, 145

Veale, F. J. P., author of Advance toBarbarism. One of those books, again,that few dare to open and still less dareto quote, 281, 283, 286

Victor Emmanuel, King of Italy. Whateverhis feelings, did not oppose, or in anycase did not oppose with enough energy,Mussolini's fatal decision for Italy toabandon the position of non-belliger-ency and attack an already beatenFrance. Finally put his Prime Ministerfuera di combatimiento, and asked Mar-shal Badoglio to attack his former allies,lx, 179, 181

Victoria, Queen of Great Britain, 98Visoianu, Constantin, Maniu's emissary to

Cairo where he brought the map of the

Index o f Persons / 323

lines of retreat of the Rumanian Armyto help the enemy in his bombing andother operations . Rumanian ForeignMinister, December 1944-March 1945 .Bearer of Maniu's acceptance of a con-ditional capitulation which opened thecountry to savage Soviet hordes. Fledfrom Rumania when the havoc he hadhelped to create seemed too hot for him .Presently head of the Rumanian Na-tional Committee with $1000 a monthsalary from the State Department, lxi,110, 155, 244, 257, 295-297

Vlad the Impaler, xii, 150Vlasov, General Andrei, prisoner of theGermans. Organized a Russian NationalArmy in order to liberate Russia fromthe Communist yoke. Hitler never per-mitted him to fight . The United Statesand British Commands handed him overwith all his soldiers, and all the Russianrefugees who had followed the Germanarmies in their retreat, in circumstancesthoroughly described by P . J. Huxley-Blythe in his book The East Came West,a book whose reading we recommendonly to adult males with strong stom-achs. (The Caxton Printers Ltd ., Cald-well, Idaho), 265

Vojen, Victor, 164, 209Vorobchievici, Colonel, Rumanian Mili-

tary Attach6 in Berlin . Was warned byGerman military authorities of Sovietmilitary preparations at the Bessarabianfrontier. Tried to communicate hisanxiety and that of his German col-leagues to Gafencu, Rumania's ForeignMinister, but did not succeed, liv, 152,153, 155

Vyshinsky, Andrei, Commissar for For-eign Affairs . Soviet Proconsul in Ru-mania. As Soviet Representative at theUN broadly popularized the Russian"Nyetl", lxiv, 222, 259, 297

Wales, Prince of, 81Warburg, 23Washington, George, Founding father and

President of the United States . Knewabout the danger from the Illuminati, 44

Weber, Eugen, 8, 25, 29-31, 33, 34, 36-40,106,222,234,236,2$7

324 / Index of Persons

Weidemann, Captain, Hitler's private sec-retary . Later German Counsul in SanFrancisco, 115, 124

Weishaupt, Adam, xiv, 4Weizsacker, Baron Ernst von, Undersecre-tary of State in the Auswartige Amt .Worked for the enemy from the firstdays of World War II, xxiii, xlix, 135,189, 190

Westin, Alan F., 237Weygand, Marshal Maxime, 87Wilson, Hugh, xlvi, 117Wilson, Woodrow, President of the United

States. Saved the Bolshevik adventurefrom miscarriage. Initiator of the mon-strous collusion between the Commu-nist and Christian Worlds, xvi, xxxii, 19

Winant, John G ., Roosevelt's Ambassadorto London, 291, 292

Wolff, see Lupescu, MagdaWurmbrand, Rev. Richard, an evangelist

pastor . Saved from the Communistprisons in Rumania . Tries by lecturingand writing to inform the Americanpublic of the enormous hoax which is

tried upon them when told that thingshave changed in Communist countriesand that Communism is getting civil-ized, 30,197-199

Yamashita, General Tomoyuki, one ofJapan's most brilliant and heroic sol-diers . Sentenced to death by one of thevictor's hangmen courts and executed .As so many of his comrades "he wasrushed to trial under an impropercharge, given insufficient time to pre-pare an adequate defense, deprived ofthe benefit of some of the most elemen-tary rules of evidence and summarilysentenced to be hanged," to use justiceFrank Murphy's words, 286

Zamfirescu, Alexandru Duiliu, Carol's En-voy to Rome and Copenhagen, actuallyin Communist service, 130, 150

Zinoviev, Grigori Evseevich, xxxiZogu, King of Albania, the victim of

Italian gratuitous aggression, xlviii

Act of Appropriation, 12Advance to Barbarism, 281Agrarian Reform of 1917-1920, xiv, 9, 28,

29, 59, 175Air Force Convention, xliAlbania, ix, xxv, xxvi, xlvii, xlviii, 13,

126, 181All for the Country Party, 37, 38, 54. See

also Legionary Movement .Alsace-Lorraine, 73Altenburg-Roggieri Report, 177, 179America . See United States .American Council of Learned Studies, 39American Government . See United States .Anglo-Polish Military Agreement, 1Anti-Communism, xix, lvii, lxi, 82Anti-Communists, xx, xxii, xxxv, 17, 26,

27, 126, 189, 198, 254, 265Armistice, liv, 248, 252-254, 257, 290, 294,

296-299Arriba, 197Association of Christian Students, xvii, 32 .

See also Legionary Movement.Atlantic Charter, lxiv, 116Atomic bombing, lxv, 281Austria, x, xiii, xxi, lvii, lxiv, 178, 263,

265, 273; Army, 15 ; Empire, xxi, 14, 22Avec l'Armee Roumaine, 14, 15, 46Axis, 93, 98, 130, 247, 298

Balkans, x, xxvi, xxxix, lvii, lx, 17, 151,179,246

Balkan Alliance, xxxix, xlii, xliii, 60, 73,109, 127, 173

Baltic States, xx, xxxiii, lxiii, 45, 52, 60,69, 84, 86, 129, 130, 258

Bamboo Curtain, 192Barboi Monastery, 4Bassarab dynasty, xiBelgian Civil Code, 10

General Index

Belgium, xxxv, x1i, 48, 90, 92Berchtesgaden, xlv, xlvi, 115, 139, 143, 210,

213,214Berlin . See Germany.Berlingske Tidende, 136Bessarabia, xiii, xxii, Iv, 50, 51, 53, 61, 62,

84, 86, 87, 92-94, 107, 122, 127, 129, 152-155, 158, 164, 171, 175, 183, 245, 250, 258,293

Bethesda Naval Hospital, lxvBig Powers, Conference of the, IiiBlack Shirts, lx, 179, 286Blitzkrieg, liv, 151Blue Book, British Foreign Office, 143Blue Shirts, 105, 106Bohemia, xlvii, 126, 136, 261Bolshevik, xxxi, xxxii, 15, 18-21, 28, 54, 77Bolshevik Government. See Soviet Russia .Bolshevik Political Centre, xxxii, 20Bolshevik Revolution . See Russian Revo-

lution .Bolshevism, xv, xxxii, xlii, 73, 234Bomber Offensive, 284Bombing Vindicated, 283Boyard, xiii, 3-5, 7-10, 15, 170Brancoveneasa, xiii, 10Britain . See Great Britain.British Blue Book No . 75, 135British Blue Book No . 82, 135British Blue Book, No . 96, 136British Embassy, xlviii, 134, 291British Empire . See Great Britain .British Government White Paper, 284British Legation, lxiv, 259, 266Brotherhoods of the Cross, 33, 34Bucharest, ix, xxxv, xxxvi, xlii, xliii, xlviii,

xlix, Iv-lvii, lix, lx, lxii-lxiv, 13, 14, 16,46, 49, 56, 60, 67, 72, 74-76, 85, 86, 88,92, 97-100, 115, 124, 126, 128, 130, 147-149, 151-153, 156, 158, 160, 162, 163, 167,171, 176, 189, 193, 197, 199, 208, 215--217,

325

326 / General Index226, 227, 235, 248, 251, 252, 257-259, 263,273, 274, 290

Bucharest Army Corps, Iv, 163Buchenwald, 40, 243, 257Bucovina, xiii, 92, 94, 122, 127, 129, 153,

155, 171, 175, 183, 245, 258, 293Bulgaria, x, xxv, xxvi, Iv, lvii, 14, 86, 128,

153, 159, 184, 193, 226, 228, 239, 246, 251,280, 290 ; Army, 251

Calea Victoriei, 218Cantacuzene Palace, 104, 105Carpathians, 5, 14, 153, 173, 250, 251, 262Cavour, 179Channel Islands, 271Chetniks, xxvi, 239China, lxv, 109, 192, 234, 271, 285Christian Civilization, xviii, xxv, 27, 108,

124, 270, 287Ciano Diaries, The, 181Ci-Devant, 137, 146Civil War in Spain . See Spanish Civil War.Codreanu's Movement, growth, 32-38. See

Association of Christian Students,Brotherhoods of the Cross, Guard ofNational Conscience, Iron Guard,League of National Christian Defense(LANG), Legion of the Archangel Mi-chael, Legionary Movement .

Comanesti Court, 5"Comertul Legionar," 113Committee of the Rights of Man, 287Communism, xv, xvi, xx, xxii, xxiv-xxvi,

xxxvi-xxxviii, 14, 19, 20, 26, 27, 30, 68,69, 82, 94, 128, 137, 161, 178, 191, 192,196, 198, 234, 241, 286

Communist Manifesto, xvCommunist Party, xvi, xxiii, 234, 252, 258,

299Communists, xv, xvi, xix, xxii-xxiv, xxvi,

xxvii, xxxii, xxxiii, xxiv, xxxvi, xliii, lx,lxi-lxv, 8, 10, 19-22, 26, 27, 29, 30, 32,40, 41, 46, 47, 50, 60, 62, 65, 67, 68, 83-85, 87-89, 91, 93, 95, 96, 98, 100, 106, 127,128, 154, 155, 161, 169, 172, 174, 181, 189,191-194, 196-199, 214, 216, 219, 221, 224,231, 234, 236-238, 240, 245, 251, 254, 256,258, 259, 266, 270-272, 274, 279, 285, 287,291, 298

Conservative Party, xiv, xviii, 3, 8, 9, 27,28, 103, 271

Conspiracy, xiv, xv, x

xviii-xx, xxi,

xxiii, xxv-xxvii, 12, 21, 69, 93, 196, 232,234, 273, 291

Convention of Armistice, lxiii, 297Corn-Luncei, battle of, 4Council of the People's Commissars, xxxiCoup d'etat (Putsch), xliv, 122, 168, 169,

173, 189, 211, 291, 296Court of Cassation, 38, 119, 204, 205Court of Saint James, 20, 98Cristea Government, 110, 112Crown Council, 126, 153Czecho-Slovak Legion, xxxii, 19Czecho-Slovak National Council, 17Czecho-Slovak Treasury, 20Czecho-Slovakia, x, xx, xxv, xxvi, xxxii,

xxxiii, xl, xli, xlv, 17, 27, 48, 65, 70, 72,75, 81, 84, 87, 90, 95, 97, 98, 115, 116,122, 123, 127, 128, 137, 193

Czecho-Soviet Pact of Mutual Assistance,xxi, xl, 60, 72, 83, 85, 123

"Czecho-Soviet Protectorate or Independ-ent Rumanian Kingdom?", 98

Dachau, 40, 243, 257Dacia, x, xii, 7, 32Danish Legation, 132Danube, xi, 14, 125, 151, 153, 171, 173, 207,

219, 227, 228, 251Danube Delta, 123, 152, 172, 184, 250Danzig, xlv-xlviii, xlix, I, li, 109, 139, 140,

142, 143, 147, 287Danzig Senate, xlixDardanelles, 184Defense de la Paix, 116, 145Denmark, 240, 241, 242, 256, 269-271Denmark Legion, 241Destin de la Roumanie, 55, 211Detroit News, 198Deutsche Wochen Zeitung, 197Die Stern, xxivDiplomatic Papers, 289, 292, 296Division of Southern European Affairs, 294Dniester, x, 15, 62, 245Don, lix, 150Drava, 269Dresden, lxiv, 281-284Duca Government, xxxixDumbraveni, 7

Eagle Nest Pass, 24East Germany, lxiiiEcho de Paris, 52

Elbe, xxvi, 281England. See Great Britain.Estonia, xxvi, xxxv, 45, 63, 172, 193Ethiopia, x1i, 83, 109European Affairs, Office of, 292European Right, The, 8, 9, 25, 26, 28, 106,

222, 234, 236

Fabian Socialists, xv, xxiii, 83, 189Fascism, xviFascist, lx, 27, 64, 66, 125, 181, 235Fascist Youth Organization, 125Final Report, li, Iii, 134, 136, 140Finland, xxxi, liv, lvii, lviii, 45, 52, 59, 86,

130, 152, 246 ; Army, 227, 239First World War . See World War I.Florida Times-Union, 199Focsani-NAm oloasa- Galati Line, Ixii, lxiii,

153, 250, 251, 299France, x, xiii, xiv, xx, xxii, xxxiii-xxxv,

xxxviii, xl-xlii, xlvi, xlviii, liii, liv, Ixi,17, 19-21, 26, 45, 48-54, 60, 64-66, 69, 74,81, 83-85, 87, 90-95, 101, 102, 108, 110,118, 122, 124, 127, 128, 130, 136-139, 145-147, 151, 169, 172, 173, 178, 181, 190, 245,247, 285, 287 ; Air Force, 17 ; Army, li, 20,147, 254; High Command, 285; Parlia-ment, xx, xli, 20, 49, 72, 73, 81, 83, 88-90

Franco-Britannic General Staff Agreement,90

Franco-German Pact, 117, 118Franco-Soviet Pact of Mutual Assistance,

xx, xxi, xl, 48, 60, 68, 72, 83, 85, 88, 90,92, 123

Franco-Soviet Treaty of Non-aggression,xxxviii

French Foreign Legion, 274French Revolution, xiv, xvi, 5, 112French Socialist Party, 56French Yellow Book No. 327, 145Frontul Renasterei Nationale (FRN), 125,

129

Geneva agreements, 74 . See also GenevaConvention .

Geneva Convention, 265, 285, 286Geneve contre la Pa ix, 20Genoa conference, xxxivGerman Embassy, xxiii, xlv, 117, 189German Government. See Germany .

General Index / 327

German Legation, 160, 161, 171, 183, 208,218, 226

German-Polish alliance, xlGerman-Polish Treaty, xlv, 139Germany, x, xiii, xix, xx-xxvi, xxxiv, xxxv,

xxxvii-liv, lvi-lix, lxii-lxv, 13, 14, 20, 26,27, 33, 40, 47-49, 55, 60, 66, 67-76, 31-87, 90-93, 109, 115-117, 121-134, 136-139, 141-148, 151-153, 155, 158-164, 167,176, 171-178, 181, 183-185, 188, 189, 207,208, 212, 213, 219, 222, 226, 232, 239, 241-243, 246, 247, 251, 256, 260, 261, 263, 265,268, 270, 279, 282-285, 290, 293, 296 ; AirForce (Luftwaffe), 257, 283 ; Army, xxvi,Iii, liii, lvii-lix, 1xii, 15, 91, 106, 113, 1 .16,145, 146, 151, 152, 161, 169, 173, 190, 218,219, 228, 239, 251, 265, 295, 296 ; HighCommand, xxiii, liii, lix

Gestapo, xxiv, 243Glendale News Press, 198Goga Government, xliv, 111, 122Government of National Union, 299Great Britain, xxi-xxiii, xxvi, xxxiii-xxxv,

xxxviii, xli-xliii, xlvi-xlviii, 1, li-liv, ]Lvii,lviii, 1xv, 19, 20, 25, 48, 49, 65, 69, 81--83,85, 91, 94, 95, 98, 108, 110, 116-118, 121-124, 127-133, 136-147, 151, 162, 172, 173,180, 184, 188-190, 219, 232, 245, 246, 253,265, 271, 280, 283-287, 289-294, 297, 299 ;Army, 147, 269, 285 ; House of Commons,xlviii, xlix, 81, 91, 137, 141 ; House ofLords, 92, 139, 141 ; National Service,xlvi ; Parliament, 49, 138, 141

Greece, xxii, xxxix, Ivi, lvii, 30, 128, 161,173, 178, 181, 190, 280

Green Shirts, 105, 106, 125Grenoble University, xvii, 34Guard of National Conscience, xvii, 32 .

See also Legionary Movement .Guggenheim Foundation, 39, 40

Haymarket Riot, xvHearst press, 193, 194, 195Histoire des Roumains de la Dacie Tra-

jane, 3Hitler, 140Hitler, Konig Carol and Marschall An-

tonescu, 180Hitler's Testament, 124House of Commons . See Great Britain ..House of Lords. See Great Britain .Human Events, 198

328 / General IndexHungarian Arrow Cross Government, 266Hungary, x, xi, xii, xxv, xxvi, xxxii, xxxiii,

xxxix, 1, Iv, lvii, 8, 19-21, 66, 67, 70, 74,86, 122, 124, 126-128, 153, 159, 161, 163,171, 177, 193, 219, 232, 266, 280, 285, 295

Illuminati, Order of, xiv, xv, xvi, 4, 11Its font appelee Cassandra, 64Imperial Russian Army, 14, 15Imperial Russian Treasury, 20International Court, 287Ion-Voda, 215Iorga-Argetoianu Government, xxxvi,

xxxviiIorga-Madgearu Case, The, 201I Responsabili, 69Iron Curtain, 192, 193, 195, 274Iron Gates, 125, 151Iron Guard, xvii, xxxvi, 35, 36, 54-56, 85,93, 102, 200, 206, 211-213, 219, 222, 235,240, 264 . See also Legionary Movement .

Italian Government. See Italy .Italian Legation, 220Italian Revolution, xvItaly, xxii, xxv, xxxv, xxxviii, x1i, xliv, lvi,

lvii, lx, lxiii, 17, 18, 20, 24, 26, 27, 38, 48,49, 53, 66, 75, 81, 83, 85, 93, 97, 105, 109,112, 126, 130, 151-153, 159-161, 175-177,179-181, 183-185, 189, 209, 219, 232, 242,243, 247, 260, 289 ; Army, xli, lvi, lvii, 17,178, 289 ; Navy, 179

Japan, xxiii, lxiv, Ixv, 29, 128, 183-185, 219,281

Jilava, lvi, 38, 120, 123, 200-207, 221, 225,236

Jockey Club, 261John Birch Society, The, 237Jora Ford. See Prut .Juarezista Revolution, xv

Katyn, liv, lx, 258, 270, 280, 287Kellogg-Briand Pact, xxxv, 23, 50, 90King Carol, Hitler and Lupescu, 233Kneaz, 3Kneazina, 3, 7Kremlin . See Soviet Russia .Krupp guns, 77Kuhn, Loeb & Co ., 23

La Bete sans Nom, 137, 241, 287Labour Party, 20

L'Action Franyaise, (L'Ami du Peuple, JeSuis Partout, and Gringoire), 88

La Roumanie Peut-elle Combattre surdeux Fronts, 3, 14

Last Battle, The, xxivLast Days of Europe, The, 130Latin League, lixLatvia, xxvi, xxxv, 63, 172, 193Laval Government, 89League of Communists, xvLeague of Just Men, xvLeague of National Christian Defense

(LANC), xvii, xxxiv, 33-35, 37, 54 . Seealso Codreanu's Movement .

League of Nations, xv, xxxv, x1, xli, xliii,xlvi, liv, 48, 51, 52, 61, 64, 75, 90, 109,127, 143, 159, 241

League of Nations Council, xlii, 92League of Nations Covenant, xxxix, 90, 91Legion of the Archangel Michael. See Le-

gionary Movement .Legion Valonne, 269Legionaries . See Legionary Movement .Legionary Movement, ix, x, xvii-xix, xxi,

xxii, xxv, xxvii, xxxv-xxxii, xli, xliii,xliv, xlvi-xlviii, liii-lx, lxii, 3, 25-31, 33,35-41, 54-56, 69, 71, 85, 93, 94, 97, 100-105, 108-115, 119, 120, 122-126, 131, 148-151, 154, 157-160, 163, 164, 167, 171, 173,174, 177, 179, 181, 185, 186, 200-208, 210-219, 222-226, 228, 231-237, 239, 240, 242,243, 246, 248, 257, 260, 261, 263, 272-275

Legionary Women's Organization, xlviiiL'Envoye de L'Archange, 232Le Temps, 13Liberal Dissident Party, xl, xlii, 67, 102,

103Liberal Government, xxxiv, xli, 33, 35, 36,

55Liberal Party, xxxviii, lx, 5, 8, 12, 28, 87,

102, 103, 169, 271, 299Liberals, xxvi, 28Lithuania, xxvi, 172, 193Little Entente, xxxiii, xlii, xliii, 65, 66, 70,

73-75, 84, 90, 98, 109, 127, 173Litvinov Protocol, xxxvLocarno Pact, xx, xxi, xxxv, xxxviii, xli,

xlii, 48, 90-92, 116London . See Great Britain .Longest Day, The, xxivLoyalist Forces, 95

Malaxa Industries, 101Manastirea Dealuliu, xviiManciu Terror, xxxiv, 33Manion Forum, 199Manual of Legionary Laws, xviii, 34Marxist, 30, 259Marxist Socialist Party, 274Mein Kampf, 121Mdmoires d'Outre-tombe, 3Minneapolis Tribune, 198Minorities Agreement, xxxixMoldavia, xi, xii, xvii, 1xii, 3-7, 10, 32, 50,

92, 94, 96, 150, 154, 214, 223, 246, 250Mon Ambassade en Russie Sovidtique,

1917-1919, 19Monastery of Bistritsa, 235Monastery of Secul, 7Monastery of Varatic, 6Moscow . See Soviet Russia.Moscow Conference, 259Mountain Corps . See Rumanian Army .Munich Agreement, xlv, 116,137Mushat dynasty, xi, xiii

Napoleonic wars, 5, 27National Christian Party, xliv, 103 . See also

Goga Government .National Conference on Peace, 196National Democratic Front, 258National Legionary Government, Iv, lvi,

31, 154, 171, 172, 206, 211, 212, 216, 221National Peasant Government, xxxvi-

xxxviii, 222National Peasant Party, lix, 21, 28, 87, 102,

103, 114, 203, 244, 271, 299National Socialism, xvi, 48, 163National Socialist Party, xxxv, lvii, 81, 208NATO, 192,197Neamtz, castle of, 7Neamul Romdnesc, 87, 113Neue Ziiricher Zeitung, 194New York Journal American, xxivNew York Times, The, 117, 118, 192, 195,

198Nicopolis, battle of, xiNonaggression Pact, xxi, xxxvii-xxxix, xli,

47-52, 54, 61, 90, 92, 124. See also Rib-bentrop-Molotov Agreement.

Norway, liv, 151Niirnberg, xxxv, liv, Ixv, 16, 116, 189, 191,203, 270

General Index / 329Oder, xxv, 262Order of Victory, 154, 254, 271Ottoman Empire, xii

Pact of Consultation and Resistance, xlviiiPact of Definition of Aggression, xxxviiiPact of Locarno . See Locarno Pact .Palace Lobkowitz, 260Palais Sturdza, 54, 67, 86, 99, 122Palazzo Venetia, 180Paris Conference . See Peace Conference in

Paris .Patriotic Democratic Front, lxiPeace Conference in Paris, 110, 155, 244,

259, 261Pe Margina Prapastei, 222Pentru Legionari, 37People, The, 283Petrograd, xxxi, xxxii, 16, 18Pittsburgh Agreement, xlvii, 17Ploesti, 129, 215Ploesti: Great Ground-Air Battle, 1 Au-

gust, 1943, 235Poland, xi, xii, xx-xxiii, xxv, xxvi, xxxiii,

xxxv-xliii, xlv-xlviii, xlix-liv, lxiii, 20,21, 45, 48-52, 54, 60, 61, 66-69, 74-76, 82-84, 86, 92-95, 97, 109, 110, 112, 117, 123,124, 127-130, 133-142, 145-147, 174, 193,219, 241, 245, 258, 265, 270, 284, 287 ;Army, liii, 145, 148; High Command,liii

Polish Alliance, 90Polish Corridor, xlv, xlviii, 137, 139, 142Polish Embassy, IiiPolish Government. See Poland .Polish White Book Document No . 109, 1.35,

141Popular Party, 36Populist, 28Portugal, 1xiv, 95, 247Potsdam, lxiv, 84, 192, 259, 271Potsdam Conference . See Potsdam.Prague, xxi, xxvi, xxxiii, xvvii, 66, 94, 98,

128, 251Pravda, xxxvPreludi del Grande Dramma, 69, 71, 75Prikase No. 1, xxxiPrisoner of Red justice, 194, 231Prut, xii, 7, 251, 266

Quadripartite Pact of Guarantee, xx,xxxviii, 48-49, 81

330 / General IndexQuand Israel Est Roi, 232Quebec Conference, xxvi

RAF, 179, 256, 257, 281, 284Red China, 192, 285Reich . See Germany.Research Grants Commission, 39Rhineland, xxi, xli, xiii, 48, 72, 90-92, 109Ribbentrop-Molotov Agreement, xl, 1, 48,

128-130, 132, 133, 152, 171, 183Riga, ix, xxxiii, xxxvii, xxxviii, 45, 50-54,

58, 60, 86, 92Roman Empire, 7, 87Romanov family, 98Rome . See Italy .Ruginoasa, 7Rumania, ix, x, xiii, xiv, xvi-xxii, xxv-

xxvii, xxxii, xxxiii, xliv, xlvii-1, liv-lviii,lxi, Ixiii, 4-6, 8-10, 14, 20, 21, 22, 26-

lxii, 20, 32, 36, 46, 66, 126, 154, 164, 209,218, 235, 236, 244, 245, 247, 248, 250, 252,254, 257, 261, 266, 289, 292-295, 299;High Command, 257, 292 ; NationalBank, 62, 118 ; Parliament, 21, 28, 53, 93,94 ; Railways, xli ; Regency, xxxvi ; Sen-ate, 88

Rumanian blood, xii, 154, 176, 261 ; cul-ture, xiii ; delegates, Ixiii; diplomaticcorps, 101 ; emissaries, lxi ; families, 3 ;folklore, 10 ; history, xviii, 5, 29, 150;language, x; nation, xii, xiii, 100, 101,113 ; nobility, xi ; officers, lix ; peasants,x, 8, 12, 29, 194, 197 ; penal law, 53 ; peo-ple, x, xiii, xviii, xxv, x1ii, Ixii, lxiv, 8,69, 85, 95, 108, 159, 173, 220, 222, 234,242, 244, 245, 253, 258-260, 263, 273, 289 ;population, 13, 29, 258; principalities,xii, xiii ; settlements, xi ; soldier, 20, 76,154, 239, 293 ; state, 5 ; territory, xi, xx,xxxv, XI, xli, x1ii, xlvi, lvii, 15, 57, 60,85, 130, 154, 172, 235, 252, 294 ; throne,

manian National Government, in exile .Rumanian Front, Ixii, 239, 244Rumanian Legation, ix, 13, 45, 50, 51, 70,

131, 132, 241, 256Rumanian Legion, 17, 240Rumanian National Committee, 244, 274,

275Rumanian National Government, in exile,

x, Ixiii, lxiv, 260, 261, 263, 265, 268 ;Army, Ixii, lxiv, 263

Rumanian Orthodox Church, 110, 111, 198Rumanian-Polish Treaty of Alliance,

xxxiiiRumanian-Soviet Railway Agreement, 86,

155Russia . See Soviet Russia .Russian Provisional Government, xxxiRussian Revolution, ix, xxxi, 16, 83, 127,

255

Sanct Spiridon, xiii, 10San Francisco, lxiv, 84, 259, 271San Mateo Times, 198Scripps-Howard press, 194, 195Second World War. See World War II.Seine, 62Serajavo, 98Serbia, 98Siegfried Line, li, 172Skoda, 46, 77, 87, 102Socialists, xv, xxxvii, 83, 258South Bend Tribune, 199Soviet Army . See Red Army.Soviet Diplomacy, History of, 48, 64, 83Soviet Embassy, lx, 117Soviet Government. See Soviet Russia .Soviet . See Soviet Russia .Soviet Legation, 51Soviet Russia, ix, x, xv, xvi, xx-xxvi, xxxii-

xliv, xlvi, xlviii, xlix, 1, liii-lxv, 8, 16-18,20-24, 26-28, 45-54, 59-69, 71, 73, 75-77, 81, 82, 84, 86-88, 90-93, 98, 109, 110,121-125, 127-130, 137, 139, 144, 146, 147,151-156, 160-162, 168-175, 180, 181, 183-185, 190-196, 208, 209, 213, 219, 220, 222,223, 226, 232, 234, 242-244, 246-248, 250,251, 253, 254, 257-261, 263, 266, 268, 271,274, 279, 280, 285, 287, 289-299 ; Army,xx, xxii, xxiii, xxv, xxvi, xxxi, xxxii, x1,liii, liv, lvi, lix, lxi, Ixiii, 32, 60, 66, 68,

35, 40, 41, 45, 47,65-74, 76, 77, 84-88,

49, 51,92, 94,

53-55,97-99,

58-62,101,

102, 108-115, 118, 122-125, 127, 129-131,147-149, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, 158-163,173, 174, 178, 181, 184, 190, 193, 194, 196-198, 212, 217, 219, 222, 226, 232, 235, 236,239, 240, 242, 243, 246, 247, 251, 253, 254,258, 259, 264, 270, 271, 274, 280, 287, 291,292, 294-297 ; Army, xxxii, lvi, lviii, lix-

12 70, 71, 84-86, 88, 89, 92, 98, 110, 113,Rumanian Corps of Volunteers . See Ru- 122, 129, 130, 152, 155, 172, 245, 248, 251,

253, 254, 258, 261, 285, 293, 294, 296;High Command, lxii, 62 ; Secret Service,xxiv ; Steppes, 245

Spain, xvi, xliv, lviii, 27, 31, 38, 75, 95-97,100, 106, 109, 126, 127, 149, 160, 170, 181,196, 247

Spanish Civil War, xliii, 55, 94, 95, 97, 100,123

Stalingrad, xxiv, xxv, lviii, lix, 250Straja Tarii, 125Stressa Agreement, 90Sudetenland, xliv, xlvSupreme Allied Command, lxi, 297Sweden, xv, 102, 247Swedish Legation, 94, 156Switzerland, xxiii, 254

Tartars, xi, 4, 50Teheran, xxvi, liv, lx, 84, 192, 253, 271, 279Teheran Conference. See Teheran .Terres Roumaines contre vents et Marees,

55,211, 263Tescani, 5, 7, 112"Three Liberties," lxivTidal Wave, 235Time magazine, 191Times (London), 118, 149, 281Transylvania, ix-xiii, Iv, 3, 4, 21, 22, 59,

160, 161, 164, 168, 173, 175, 176, 222,225, 258, 260, 267, 293-295

Treaty of Berlin, xiiiTreaty of Rapallo, xxxiv, xxxv, 47, 48Treaty of Riga, xxxiiiTripartite Pact, lvi, lvii, 185, 219Trojan Horse policy, 48, 51, 52, 54Turkey, xxxix, lx, 14, 128Turks, xi, xii, 4, 16, 50, 266

Ukraine, xxiii, 129, 251Un Chapitre d'Histoire Roumaine, 216,

244, 254Union Theological Seminary, 196United Kingdom . See Great Britain .United Nations, xv, 96, 287United Nations Conference, IxivUnited States, xiv, xv, xxii, xxv-xxvii, liii,

lviii, lx, 1xii, lxv, 18, 19, 23, 24, 27, 45,48, 59, 94, 95, 101, 108, 109, 117, 128,133, 138, 145, 185, 190-193, 195, 196,

General Index / 331

234-236, 246, 253, 260, 265, 279, 285, 28'9,292-294, 296, 297, 299 ; Air Force, 77, 281 ;Department of State, 289 ; Senate, lviii,197, 199 ; Senate Internal Security Sub-committee, 197, 198 ; Supreme Court, 286

University of California, 26, 39, 106University of Cluj, xlviUniversity of Iasi, xxxiii, 21, 32University of Paris, 274Uradel, 3USSR. See Soviet Russia.

Vadul Jorei. See Prut .Vatican, 182, 186Versailles Treaty, xxi, xli, xiii, 18, 48, 90,

141, 142Vickers Arms Industry, 95Vienna Arbitration, Iv, 160, 163, 164, 171,

172, 175-177, 232, 261, 267Voevod, 4, 51Volga, lix, 150, 253Volkischer Beobachter, 72

Walachia, xi, xii, 3, 5, 7, 10, 150, 223Western Civilization, x, xiv, xvi, xxiv,

xxvi, xiii, lviii, 20, 27, 68, 108, 120, 190,250, 254, 255

Western Powers, xx, xxi, xxvi, xxxiii, x1i,xlviii, liii, liv, lix-lxi, lxiii, lxv, 20, 27,45, 47, 68, 69, 90, 95, 116, 128, 130, 133,151, 192, 244, 247, 251, 252, 256, 257, 271,275, 290, 293

White House, 23White Russians, 20World Crisis, The, V, The Aftermath, 20,

82World War I, ix, xiii-xvi, xx, 3, 7, 9, 10,

13, 14, 21, 25-28, 36, 46, 48, 50, 54, 62,77, 81, 83, 90, 93, 122, 214, 226, 239,271, 286

World War II, x, xi, xiv, xvi, xx, xxi, xxv,xxvi, xxxiii, xl, xli, liii, lvi, 20, 25, 48,67, 77, 81, 95, 137, 150, 161, 172, 184, 241,255, 270

Yalta, liv, 84, 192, 259, 270, 271, 279Yugoslavia, xxii, xxv, xxvi, xxxiii, xxxiv,

xxxix, 60, 65, 66, 70, 74, 75, 122, 161, 219,245, 280; Army, 47